Sniffsniff

Mauna. Sounds good. There's a phonetic softness to it, something round, harmonious, pleasing.

But we don't want to be guided by subjective vagueness, but by highly empirical facts. Here you go: Mauna comes from Hindu philosophy and refers to a vow of silence that is intended to guide the silent person on the long and arduous path to inner peace and ultimately lead to peace of mind.

As I generally imagine absolute peace of mind to be gentle, round, harmonious and pleasing, I am a little surprised at how vividly onomatopoeia mediates between the signifier and the signified.

Perhaps my associative coincidence is simply due to the fact that I had already sprayed a tiny droplet of the fragrance on the back of my hand when I thought about the effect of the name. Because Mauna has exactly the same effect on me: gentle, round, harmonious, pleasing.

A soft, contemplative fragrance with a beautiful sandalwood soul. A calming and grounding fragrance. A rather quiet fragrance that invites you to explore its facets in peace and with due attentiveness. A fragrance that appears approachable thanks to its warm, woody aura and yet constantly oscillates between closeness and distance. A fragrance whose top note is characterized by spicy pepperiness, over which a delicate veil of incense lies. A fragrance whose wonderfully balanced and feather-light sweetness only reveals itself when the soft benzoin and tonka bean enter the stage in the heart note.

However, these notes are merely charming extras that accentuate the sandalwood, which for me is the undisputed centerpiece of the fragrance, so exquisitely that I would like to say that I have hardly ever smelled it more beautifully.

Sandalwood tends to be interpreted in a brute way and then quickly comes across to me as a chip fragrance. And by that I mean the cheaper chipboard from the Far East. The ones where the formaldehyde limits are not taken quite so seriously.

With Mauna, you can be completely unconcerned about this. Brachial synthetics are alien to this fragrance. It's more like a previously unknown part of me that is venturing to the surface today. It's nice that you're here.

When would I wear it? Always. And where? Everywhere. And can Aunt Hilde wear it too? Sure. Even Uncle Jürgen.

And does it really perform in beast mode? No. Fortunately not.
After all, he is peace of mind.

Velvet Tonka found its way to me as a generous gift in the form of a barely touched 3-ml Essenza Nobile bottle. A slight hint of skepticism was already spreading here. It didn't seem to have met the taste of its buyer.

I didn't really have the fragrance on my radar - BDK isn't really my brand, apart from Vanille Leather, which doesn't seem to be very popular here. Too bold, sometimes very synthetic, often one-dimensional.

And I generally have certain difficulties with almonds. No, I have to differentiate here. Almonds are great - but marzipan is my kryptonite. I'm a marzipan aversionista. Sugar stickiness. If there were fancy presents from Niederegger at Christmas, I preferred to swap them for homework on the second day of school after the vacations. Stable currency.

In anticipation of a strong, presumably very sweet marzipan scent, I sprayed Velvet Tonka on the back of my hand. Three times fzzzz. And bang. Self-fulfilling prophecy. The marzipan club strikes mercilessly. Latthammer to the middle of my forehead. In a fraction of a second, I find myself in a thick cloud of screaming sweet marzipan. The velvet here seems to be made of bristly synthetic fibers. Velvet is definitely different. Even after the intense alcohol greeting has faded, the scratchiness continues.

It doesn't help, I have to go now. Edeka is calling, the store is closing soon. My car is small, very small. The passenger compartment is a grateful scent carrier. I smell marzipan, marzipan, marzipan. Or maybe it's more like persipan. The cheap substitute. Because my Niederegger products smelled much more pleasant and not so pungently bitter and artificial.

As I stand at the checkout after shopping, I can almost see the cloud of marzipan surrounding me. It is ochre yellow. I feel ashamed and stared at. I sigh unrestrainedly. The man behind me takes a step back. I don't blame him, I wouldn't have done anything differently. I feel disguised. This sweetness, this edible. That's not me.

Later, on the beach, it is more airy, now a subtle orange blossom mixes into the mix. The marzipan gives way to tonka bean, which also has a certain inherent marzipaniness - but no longer with the intensity of the initial almond accord. There is also a hint of vanilla. But it remains sweet. It becomes more gracious, loses a little of its raspy mercilessness. I still don't like it.

I'm glad I only sprayed the fragrance on the back of my hand and not on my neck. I probably would have burst my collar.

I feel the same way about Velvet Tonka as I do about many other BDKs I've tested - too bold, very synthetic, one-dimensional.

But what is an oath to one is a nightingale to another.

Summer 1997, an overnight tent party at my friend Manu's house. Manu had very liberal parents who didn't mind that various bottles of Berentzen's milk liqueur range and a few bottles of a well-known Irish toffee liqueur found their way into the orchard. After all, we were all already confirmed. Dear Josy was very enthusiastic and grabbed some. She wanted to throw all inhibitions overboard that evening and finally end up with Christoph. She poured the sweet and sticky stuff down her throat like there was no tomorrow. Christoph seemed quite taken with it and did the same. At some point, he came up with the idea of mixing Josy a delicious long drink: Baileys with apple juice. I observed, not without interest but from a safe distance, that the mixture formed funny flakes and didn't look particularly appetizing in terms of colour. However, Josy was not to be deterred and drank what Cupid had offered her with a deathly disdain. At some point, she rose from her cross-legged position. The color of her face had changed. Not necessarily to her advantage. It now somehow resembled the pale beige-green of the mixed drink she had consumed earlier. Instead of making her way to the toilet, Josy took a big lunge in the direction of my brand new igloo tent. She dropped to her knees quite quickly and at the same moment a sweet and sour gush of her stomach contents spilled out onto the previously untainted bright blue tent wall. I will never forget that smell. Thank you again, dear Josy!
With the arrival of Happy Nuts, I was able to relive this wonderful moment of my youth in all its olfactory splendor. Happy Nuts is a conglomeration of all kinds of gourmand notes that seem so randomly and inharmoniously thrown together that words fail me. I don't smell anything nutty, or at least nothing that I could associate with a pleasant nutty scent. Pungent, artificial ethyl maltol sweetness accompanies this impenetrable sweet puree. So far, so bad. If patchouli and tobacco hadn't also fallen into the mash, giving the whole thing a certain dull acidity that immediately catapults me back to 1997. Fermented chocolate sweetness. The fragrance is absolutely unwearable for me and I would be highly uncomfortable if someone smelled me like this.

No nuts for Cinderella.

Since I've noticed more and more often lately that people obviously assume they can adequately describe and appreciate a fragrance in 50 to 60 words, I'll divide the following review into two parts: Part 1 tells you everything you need to know about the fragrance, Part 2 is aimed at people with too much free time in the day.

Part 1: Awesome juice, really cuddly and also a bit sexy, decent performance, completely underrated. Price-performance cracker. An absolute must-buy for vanilla and incense fans.

Part 2:
How I came across this fragrance is easy to explain: Read "Pas de Velours" somewhere on this site, visited the fragrance page, read the pyramid and statements, ordered a bottle.

Well, and at some point the bottle arrived, was sprayed on the back of my hand and approved. No, I'm flirting with Nordic restraint here. Ever since I smelled "Pas de Velours" for the first time, I have been addicted to this fragrance.

"Pas de Velours" ... oh, how nice it sounds. Très français! But what does that actually mean? My school French immediately tells me "no velvet". Hello, no velvet? Nope. That can't be serious. How can such a wonderfully warm and truly velvety-soft fragrance be so explicitly denied any velvety quality in its name? So there must be more to it than that. The word "pas" is a very sneaky contemporary; it can not only be used as a building block for the French negation, but also as a multi-purpose noun meaning, among other things, step, dance step, gait, road or soles. And "pas de velours" in France are what Germans commonly refer to as velvet paws. Cat's feet. I see. Yes, I'm complètement d'accord with the name.
Because "Pas de Velours" snuggles up to its wearer as smoothly as a purring cat on a cuddle course. Mind you, a clawless feline. The incense, which undoubtedly dominates this fragrance, is not scratchy and cool here, but is surrounded by a fluffy, light cloud of vanilla that makes it warm and inviting. And admittedly: There's not much more going on here. The pyramid leaves no doubt that "Pas de Velours" is rather simple in its conception. Ylang-ylang in the head, incense in the heart, vanilla in the base. It could be more complex. And the combination of tropical ylang-ylang and incense also sounds somehow grotesque. About as harmonious as a caramel cake accord with civet and castoreum. But to make a long story short: This strange combination manages to take the sacral teeth out of incense and lend it an approachable, optimistic aura. Pas de Velours" reveals its flattering and bright side right from the top note, which is flanked by a pleasant sweetness reminiscent of powdered sugar. As the pyramid suggests, the rest of the fragrance is not particularly spectacular. But it doesn't have to be, because this sweet, smoky, warm cocoon of well-being is allowed to remain exactly as it is. Over time, however, the fragrance settles a little, the vanilla comes more to the fore and relegates ylang-ylang to the ranks. Here, the fragrance finally becomes darker, more intimate and more ambery.

I love the smell of incense and was looking for a long time for a wearable fragrance that would clearly emphasize this note without drifting off in a strained avant-garde direction of "olfactory performance art". I tested a lot of things, many of which smelled like incense (and some of which smelled like Hulle), but very few of them were really wearable in the sense of my antiquated dogma "perfume as a flattering fragrance".

With "Pas de Velours", I now have a really fine incense companion at my side that I am completely enthusiastic about. I am fascinated by how skillfully the three fragrance notes have been woven into a magical unity that caresses me all day long like a silvery golden veil. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes it is enough for perfumers to simply knit.

Recently, the editorial text for the new Carlo Colucci Signature series caught my eye on the Parfumo home page. Admittedly, the flacon design appealed to me, the fragrance check as well. Carlo Colucci - somewhere in the back of my mind, blurry images from the late 90s are fighting their way to the light of day. German class, 10th grade. Mr. R. asks one by one to come to the front to announce the exam results. He likes to wear wool sweaters in muted earth tones. I sit down next to Mr. R. and discover a small label on his chest. Carlo Colucci. My adolescent brain reads and immediately turns Colucci into "Polutschi". While I still wonder whether Carlo Polutschi is the extramarital brother of Bruno Banani, a laughing fit makes its way and only wants to end again after the visibly annoyed Mr. R. has prescribed me a dose of fresh air in front of the door.
This failure was very, very embarrassing to me in the aftermath, because Mr. R. was a quite wonderful person and teacher and it would never have occurred to me to exploit his good nature or to expose him in any way maliciously.
The fact that the brand still exists brought a smile to my face when I was browsing this site, because today I like to think back to my school days and to Mr. R., who accompanied me from the 7th grade all the way to the oral final exams.
And so the desire to test the fragrance became a matter of the heart. The good old days ...

So I could not help but acquire it, despite lack of tester, when he stood there suddenly in all its glory in front of me in the village Rossi shelf. The presentation is really first cream with cherry. There was then also the self-imposed blind purchase ban quickly forgotten. And after all, the fragrance could already refer to 8.0 perfume points ... along with three statements that were not particularly averse. Like Black Opium in oriental. Hey, why not. I like Black Opium, but always found him a little too tame.

I want to jump right in. Flowers, Black Opium? Hömma! This is a 200-decibel spicy firecracker with oudrauschen! Cotton candy? Where? And what does cotton candy smell like anyway? I smell a truckload of cinnamon, several scoops of other spices I don't have the nose to classify, a lot of wood, and the kind of musk that reminds me that overly intense physical activity in a polyester loaf rarely has any olfactory consequences. So not a clean musk, but rather the metallic-animalic variety. On my sweater, I find the scent exciting and very unexpected. Sweet as well as tart in equal measure. Definitely oriental. And totally far away from the current women's mainstream. Much more desert than sea of flowers. At most, I can guess the rose with a lot of good will and the knowledge that it is listed in the pyramid. Fruits? Perhaps a homeopathic appeal. I do not like it so badly. Somehow it falls out of time, blind I would have probably located it more around the turn of the millennium. However, there is also this oud touch, which then brings him back to the here and now. Would probably in principle also worth a try on the man. But on my skin, the fragrance develops unfortunately absolutely disastrous. Artificial musk-sweat-wood. Cloth hui, skin pfui. But for my skin chemistry I can make Mr. Colucci yes no reproach ...
The durability is considerable and Carlo silliert also accordingly potent around.
Whether I will keep him? I do not know yet, I find him really unusual and not charmless - especially since I acquired him for 'ne narrow mark in the drugstore and not for expensive money in my favorite niche store. Sympathetic to me is the fragrance already by the fact that he stands out clearly from the rundgelutschten Zeitgeist mainstream by its corners and edges and has a clear recognition value. I need probably still a little habituation time to know in which direction the current ambivalence will develop.