Marieposa

"And now disappear and don't show your face here anytime soon, you shabby rock rat!" the Capricorn bellowed, snorting as he came to a halt right in front of the entrance to his cave, having braked from a full gallop with pounding hooves.
I rolled my eyes. The little brown rodent had long scurried behind the rocks. Besides, I knew full well that it made little sense to say anything when he was in this mood.
"Nobody should be surprised if the mangoes go rotten! And you don't need to pretend you haven't noticed anything. There are those droppings right in front of the door again, and someone has peed in the mulch."
Had I not suspected what would come next, the crazy gleam in his yellow eyes could have almost frightened me. But I suppressed a mocking smile and said as seriously as possible, "It's alright. I'll check if the mangoes have been nibbled," but made no move to get up, instead leaning my head calmly against the mountain of tuberoses.
The Capricorn rose up on his hind hooves, grabbed a broom that was leaning against the cave entrance, and began to sweep with maniacal obsession while I observed from the corner of my eye as a fluffy little face with button eyes and a shiny black snout peeked out from behind the tower of mangoes stacked in the blazing sun.
Maybe the dassie was indeed becoming a bit cheeky, slowly but surely.
I sighed and gathered a handful of wilted tuberose flowers into a bouquet. Then I took a few daring steps towards the Capricorn, took the broom from his hand, and pressed two fingers gently on the spot between his eyes. His nostrils began to tremble softly, and he stretched his leathery lips towards the tuberoses that I had slightly squished with the broomstick.
"You know, when night falls over the jungle and the flying foxes sing in the frangipani trees, all of this here won't matter so much anymore."
My words did not miss their mark, and the Capricorn nudged me lightly as he tried to snuggle his head with his grinding jaws into the crook of my arm. I, on the other hand, suddenly reached for my ear to check if the red champaca flower above it was still in place.
"If you want, you can call me Henry," the Capricorn mumbled shyly. And I sighed a second time.
You are really quirky, Henry, I thought, but I like you.

**

Dr. Ellen Covey is a neurobiologist and holds a professorship at the psychological institute of the University of Washington. She is also dedicated to the professional cultivation of orchids and handcrafts fragrances under the motto "extraordinary perfumes for extraordinary people" from mostly natural raw materials, which in my opinion, despite the versatility of her spectrum, is really nothing more than the logically consistent connection of her areas of interest.
The Ellen Covey fragrances I have encountered so far are all exceptional - and Tropic of Capricorn is no exception as a fruity-floral of a special kind: A sultry blend of tuberose, frangipani, and champaca sets new standards for the term "indolic," while overripe mango and hyraceum provide distinctly tropical accents.
My love for mushy mango and petrified rock hyrax droppings is usually somewhat underdeveloped, but combined with the intensity of the flowers, a completely surreal yet utterly irresistible blend unfolds here that I cannot and do not want to resist. Over time, the fragrance becomes milder, but not necessarily tamer. Osmanthus adds leathery facets and ensures that the animalic notes intensify throughout the duration before the fragrance concludes in a delicious sandalwood-benzoin base.
Tropic of Capricorn is not a wallflower and polarizes strongly, which is why a sparing dosage is recommended. The longevity is above average, even for a natural fragrance.

Do you remember the golden glow of my eyes?
The never-ending question about the worlds behind our temples?
And did you notice the dragon scales on my hand? Long before I surrendered to the lava flow of dark chocolate, when the inside became too big for the outside. At first, you thought you could hear the gentle purring of a cat, but as the warmth of melting resins poured bittersweet over my skin, it left nothing but a shimmering fuzz of wild leather, as if my armor of iridescent myrrh was melting like my benzoin heart.
Do you remember the echo of those distant words, echoing softly in the room, or how the purring swelled into a throaty rumble?
Then I felt how the dreamed breath clouds wrapped ever warmer around my neck and the soft ground of wrinkled tobacco leaves trembled beneath my leathery soles. In the rhythm of my wingbeats.

**

Gourmand fragrances are a tricky subject for me. Theoretically, I like the idea of smelling like chocolate, roasted almonds, coffee eclair, or crème brûlée with a crunchy caramel crust, especially in winter, but usually the dream ends after a short half hour to an hour with a queasy stomach and a long walk in the fresh air. Such scents are often just too sweet for me or too monotonous, and although I had actually put aside the desire for a decadent, delicious comfort scent a while ago, I was unexpectedly found by one such fragrance with Habana Cocoa.
The scent immediately sweeps me away at the beginning with a wave of bittersweet melted chocolate of the darkest kind, guided by castoreum into gently purring paths. After one or two hours, a dry, almost hay-like tobacco note, myrrh, and benzoin provide a pleasant change without significantly altering the character of the fragrance.
With benzoin and me, it’s a bit of a thing: sometimes this resin develops an unpleasant vanilla pudding sweetness, and sometimes it turns into the scent of sun-warmed skin - here, the benzoin unfolds together with the chocolate and the underlying castoreum a golden glowing, heart-melting quality that has sweetened many a cold, dark winter evening for me. But the best truly comes at the end, when the castoreum steps more prominently into the foreground, merging with unsweetened, also leathery labdanum (as I know it finely woven into the base of vintage chypre fragrances) and fading out with cocoa-dusted tobacco notes.
Sprayed, this extraordinary and contrasting gourmand magic would probably be too much of a good thing for me, but dabbed sparingly, Habana Cocoa wraps me around its finger anew with each wear.

Thank you for this unexpectedly successful metamorphosis into a chocolate gourmand friend, dear Floyd.

You knew that I only came to browse among all the old books and special things that you had piled up in the much too narrow shop. I lacked the money to actually buy something, but I didn’t have to explain that to you. You would never have wasted a word.
Did you perhaps sense how much effort it took me to squeeze through that dark corridor of folios and forgotten treasures? But in the end, another world opened up, bathed in the golden-brown twilight of a cracked Tiffany lamp and furnished with a dusty, worn Chesterfield sofa, in which a hint of smoked cigars lingered.
You always had a book at hand, which you brought to my refuge, and sometimes also a tea that was drawn out for far too long, sweetened with a spoonful of sugar, when I could hardly tear myself away - and I admit that I still wonder if you would have smelled of amber smoke and leathery book dust if you had sat down next to me.
Sometimes my path led me late at night through your alley, and sometimes music and twilight seeped through the glass door, accompanied by the shadowy movements of your profile with headphones on. Then I couldn’t help but stop, listen for a moment, even though I felt foolish - and yes, secretly I hoped that you would discover me and invite me in, sharing a cigar with me silently on the narrow terrace in the backyard with the meager herb patch.
At some point, you disappeared, just like the Tiffany lamp, but on the Chesterfield lay a note with my name in a book. I didn’t know you knew it.

**

When I read, I often find that what is NOT in the text has just as much significance and meaning as the actual written words. Of course, it is these words that allow us to judge the quality of a text, which we analyze and comprehend, but to be honest, I am firmly convinced that the true magic of a text arises between the lines, in the gaps that are sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously omitted.
This omission is also an art in fragrances. Often the notes seem so dense to me that they only scream for attention and leave no room for subtext. Yet that is exactly what I love so much when I get to know a new scent: filling those little gaps in the olfactory composition with my associations, ideas, and memories.
Lyn Harris is a master at opening spaces of association with her fragrances, subtly guiding her recipients in a certain direction and leaving enough room at the edge of the subconscious for everyone to fill with their own perception. This tendency is already clearly evident in her works for Miller Harris, Trudon, and Solange Azagury-Partridge, but with her delicate, dreamlike scents for Perfumer H, she has perfected it.
Saddle may not be my favorite from the house, but even here I didn’t have to wait long after the first spray for a door of memory to open in my mind, piecing together what I smelled into an image.
The scent starts with a slightly sharp citrus note, aldehydes, orange blossoms, and an herbal note that could be attributed to green patchouli. I also think I perceive a scratchy coumarin. In this phase, I feel reminded of nostalgic medicinal aftershave, which quickly expands into a warm, smoky note that I believe I have also sensed in Smoke, White Smoke, and Mist, accompanied by golden shimmering resins with vanilla accents. The scent remains consistently dry and as transparently shimmering as stirred dust in a dimly lit private library. The vanilla note does its part to make me think of old books and high-quality paper, especially when I perceive a background leather note. Meanwhile, the smoky note has transformed, embedding itself into the leather like a memory of cigars smoked long ago, while the golden amber dust still dances above it all.
So, Saddle does not take me to a saddle room, a stable, or a riding school at all. But thanks to Lyn Harris’s sensitive mastery of omission, I get to spend a few hours in an antiquarian bookshop where I almost belonged to the inventory years ago, just like the Tiffany lamp and the Chesterfield sofa.

Thank you for sharing, dear MadameBovary.

The raw leather of the reins digs into my fingers as the horse begins to prance. The restless clattering of hooves on the cobblestones, nervous snorting, and suddenly again that burning in my chest like on that day…
I want to bury my aching fingers in the warm mane of the animal, I see the split second before me when your pupils once widened, an eyebrow barely raised and your lips slightly parted, causing my breath to catch, leaving me speechless. And so I now grip the leather saddle tighter with my bare thighs, lifting my lowered head with defiant determination. I know that my loose hair covers my bare skin. I have gently combed it with jasmine oil until it shone silky and smelled as dark as the flowers of the fateful tree. That was back when the peaches were ripening and moss tickled under my back.
The animal's coat rubs against my legs, which must shimmer like melted root butter, yet I do not lower my gaze, focusing on the calming horse, the movements of its muscles, which can again be guided with determined pressure. And so I surrender to the rhythm, while in my memory the deep humming of whispered words reaches my ear.

**

The Lover’s Tale combines a raw, somewhat dirty-animalistic leather scent with a jasmine-tinged peach chypre, which references Guerlain's Mitsouko Extrait, but even more so Rochas' Femme (1945) Parfum, and has been complemented with a generous portion of brand-typical iris butter. Like all older Bianchi fragrances, the result is creamy, dense, physical, and seemingly polarizing.
Good!
The market seems a bit oversaturated with pleasing uniformity, and I personally appreciate every fragrance that takes a different path, (almost) regardless of whether I like it or not.
That The Lover’s Tale pleases me very much is, so to speak, a delightful bonus: I have a weakness for leather scents, which is only surpassed by my love for classic chypre, and I have found in this brutal representative of the Mitsouko-Femme family a fragrance that reliably supports me. The Lover’s Tale is the Lady Godiva in my perfume cabinet, and I prefer to wear the scent on days when I feel somewhat overwhelmed or even a bit as if I had to ride through the city completely naked on a horse. Admittedly, the little pitfalls of my everyday life usually don’t take that much overcoming, but I still find it good to have Lady Godiva by my side when it’s time to hold my head up with particularly much determination.
The Lover’s Tale is characterized by seemingly endless longevity and strong sillage, which makes the scent completely unbearable when overapplied. Dabbed on lightly, it is still noticeable enough that I get approached about it, which as a chronic under-applier, usually never happens to me.

Although The Lover’s Tale has been with me for two years now, I am still grateful that you managed to sweet-talk me into giving you the sample, dear SebastianM!

Once there was a lavender day, butterflies in the sky
You carried me on vanilla clouds
And I was meant for you
You are the One, you are no one
You are everything I think about

And if I believed in fairy tales, then I would surely know,
That all my dreams would come true

Don't listen to the crazy things I say
Lay me on musk pillows and never wake me up
Not a hundred and not a thousand years
You are the One, you are no one
You are everything I think about

For if I believed in fairy tales, then I would surely know,
That all my dreams would come true

In the morning, doubting, I slipped into the glass slipper
Lonely with your gentle voice
The heart so heavy with sweet sorrow
You are the One, you are no one
You are everything I think about

But if I believed in fairy tales, then I would surely know,
That all my dreams would come true

**

Have I mentioned that I consider Ernest Daltroff a genius? Probably. And probably not just once. Pour un Homme de Caron from 1934 is his first fragrance that Caron specifically marketed for the male clientele, which does not mean that it is the first scent from the house that men could wear - or that Pour un Homme de Caron wouldn't suit women.
With its softened lavender of vanilla and tonka, the fragrance holds sweet and bitter elements in perfect balance in the top note, gradually dissolving into ever gentler, subtly ambered musk clouds. This structure is as simple as it is brilliant, so to the point and recognizable that it has been copied countless times but never reached.
Could Ernest Daltroff have been inspired by Aimé Guerlain's Jicky Extrait? While the inner contradiction of its predecessor is missing just as much as the opulence or the civet claws, the gentle lavender-tonka-vanilla accord has been perfected, the idea reduced and refined to the point where there was nothing left to omit. All of this makes Pour un Homme de Caron timeless, anticipates a modern minimalism that one would not expect in the 1930s, and leaves me in awe.
For me, Pour un Homme de Caron, with its tender nature and gentle voice, is like the fairy tale prince among men's fragrances. Nothing I would want to wear myself, as the tonka vanilla musk becomes too sweet for me in the long run, but admittedly a scent I enjoy leaning on from time to time.

Thank you very much, dear Floyd, for reminding me of this old acquaintance and that I could really dedicate a few words to it.