Tabla

It is midsummer, and as has been announced for some time, the municipality is renovating the streets in the town and covering them with a fresh layer of tar.

What a hellish device a tar machine is, as it slowly approaches you in slow motion. I watch this monstrosity with fascination for a while, as it noisily squeezes out a pitch-black blob from its underside. Inside, a hell is boiling, tar-smelling, biting fumes waft towards me with something bituminous.
On top of the machine sits a guy, yes, he is almost throne-like like a prince. With his bare torso, the man sits there, sun-tanned, and surveys me with a strange smile... His colleagues behind the machine look up to him, what the eye of the capo must have spotted, and peek out as well… the machine comes to a stop and they stare unabashedly. Oh my God, I feel slightly nauseous by now... I know exactly what they are thinking. I turn away and flee home.
Being stared at like that made me (also later on) angry.
I hated them, and it took several years before I could respond to those certain male looks with sovereign calmness and could at best categorize them as a tribute to my femininity. After all, I was only 13 years old at the time.

Meanwhile, the machine continued to press its contents onto the road.
I later see from the window how they are shoveling and have to remove the excess tar material. They curse in Italian. I giggle, serves them right...

Later, a small bump remained on the street at this spot, which should remind me of that moment again and again over the years.
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A fascinating men's smoke of the very noblest kind. I sniff tuberose, along with enormously tender, smoky-tarry-woody notes that linger on my skin in a masculine presence. Wow....

I imagine Black Tar on a cultured, advanced gentleman who, alongside everything else, still retains this wild guy within him. One who can also occasionally be found at Wacken or even at the Burning Man Festival. One who shows that he hasn't missed much in life. For example, perhaps someone like Charles Schumann, who spontaneously comes to mind.

The bottle could not be more fitting for this fragrance.

My deepest thanks to Floyd, who sent me a sample of this jewel.

The base is the foundation of any structure... What a cliché.

In the opening, fresh tarragon herb, accompanied by beautifully polished woods. It’s not quite there yet, as Oregon lavender is supposed to be part of it too. Oh… that was brief… it was gone again right away.
The others remain and are very well related to each other, with cedar and incense determining the tonality of this fragrance further on. Fine patchouli warms and, together with benzoin and vanilla, drives the process of transformation forward.

I have been sitting in my sacred grove for an hour, practicing silence and simplicity, for it is only in this that one can arrive. Today, the exercise is successful. The troop of thoughts behaves reasonably, quieting down faster than usual. I lay myself down and enter the relaxation exercise. Body awareness begins at the skin and leads inward, until all cells call my name, then it continues to the subatomic level to the almost-nothings. My dear companions, the mitochondria, give me a great round of applause upon my arrival. I am here.

This fragrance is highly complex, the ingredients of the best quality, the composition successful, and it promotes contemplation. One might classify it as a men’s fragrance, as I do, but fundamentally it is unisex.

In my statement, I placed a rose on top of it. I will certainly layer it with ylang-ylang, peony, or other flowers. That means something; I only do that when a fragrance seems sacred enough to me.



Olympic Orchids are a true rediscovery that has made me perk up anew for many years... These are not just perfumes that someone wants to sell in the niche. Ellen Covey, as I perceive it, makes a great effort to bring the true essences of fragrances closer to us in her perfumes. They could help us listen to the heart of things....

My thanks to Hector, who introduced them to me.

.... the first impression, artificial and therefore not very inviting.

Okay, the combination of cocoa and coffee makes a great cappuccino with milk, but what do they want here in a perfume with magnificent flowers?
For me, initially an unusual olfactory challenge. No matter, one should never be deceived by the first impression. Let's see... Violet and orris root, my beloved May rose.... hm hm Jasmine, very very fine, best quality.

Although everything about the scent seems valuable and thoughtfully selected, there is initially no harmony to be discerned. The individual ingredients are raging and arguing amongst themselves. Not that they can't agree, the classic protagonists have known each other in various other perfume masterpieces for ages. No, rather it’s about something new, something never seen before. In this case, it’s coffee and cocoa, which want to make a name for themselves in the high perfume politics these days.

For about three-quarters of an hour, the argument continues on my skin, everything keeps falling apart again. This coffee-cocoa mixture annoys the flowers, the base notes are trying to calm things down. I am almost inclined to wash off the perfume because of this. Oh dear, apparently a fraudster Roja has persuaded, in times of coffee to go, to equip a scent with contemporary insignia to be particularly noticed.

After about another hour - I am sorting clothes in the wardrobe - I am again surrounded by something....
A fluid, of delicate violets and my beloved May rose, in a shared floral accord, carried by patchouli, woods, a little musk, and clove, further away stands a coffee to go cup….
Ahhh, finally it has come to this. After long negotiations, an extraordinarily precious scent has emerged. The wait was worth it.
It will definitely remain in my collection.


PS
About seven hours later. I bring in wood for the fireplace, outside the air is damp and cold. Patchouli, cedar, and Kashmir wood, the deepest tone of this perfume, feel incense-like and sacred. They still carry high above on their shoulders the May rose and the violet, the undisputed queens of flowers through the cool breezes.... fantastic, how in the slow passage of time the pure essences shine full of love...

... but instead a lot of slightly burnt iris milk.

After a fresh top note, a very intense iris accord follows immediately, which I really do not like at all. It becomes softer and warmer after 10 minutes, and aldehyde envelops the entire composition - hm... somehow still interesting... or...
No, it stays that way.

An iris note can be really good in some men's fragrances, but in this combination, I don't like it at all.

What the blood accord is supposed to be, I cannot understand. Blood smells different, like protein and metal due to its iron content in hemoglobin. I know the smell of blood inside and out; I worked in the operating room for years and am therefore unbribable.
Furthermore, nothing else happens; the scent remains stagnant and dissipates after a few hours without showing any further facets.
Iris has reappeared in various perfumes over the past few years. I have a pure extrait from the iris root at home. Many iris notes in today's fragrances, like here, come across as quite loud and artificial.
It seems to me that SL wanted to make an iris - milk statement with this creation. Overall, Dent de lait feels too one-dimensional for me.

I specifically took my bottle out of the cupboard for this comment, which I acquired many years ago during my Serge Lutens phase.
Sandalwood was, alongside patchouli, an occasional companion in my Age of Aquarius youth phase. Although I was more interested in patchouli. Later, I got to know the wood as an incense material, and that’s where its true essence revealed itself to me.

Okay, just to clarify, this is not really a comment to describe this perfume.
Sandalwood only works for me as wood when it is classically burned, and there it shines, alongside Palo Santo, quite excellently.
In perfumes where woods often play an important role in the base, only when it fits the overall composition. Similar to the bass that determines the timing, in the beat together with the drums, which make up a particular piece. As a main scent, monothematically in a perfume, sandalwood is difficult, although SL made a worthy attempt here.

Here’s a little excursion from the Song of Solomon, when the Queen of Sheba once visited Solomon and brought sandalwood with her....
.... There was no spice like this, which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. The people of Hiram and the people of Solomon, who brought gold from Ophir, also brought sandalwood and precious stones. And Solomon made stairs of sandalwood in the house of the LORD and in the house of the king, and harps and zithers for the singers. Such wood had never been seen in the land of Judah before. And King Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba everything she liked and asked for, more than the guest gifts she had brought to the king. And she turned and went to her land with her retinue.

What she asked for is evident from history. One must know that the queen listened to him as one of the wisest men and therefore wished for a child from King Solomon. This was the real reason for her visit. This great queen had long been inspired to receive a child from a truly wise man.... What it means is she wanted a clever and wise man as the father of her child. And she got the child. It was Menelik, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who founded the Empire of Abyssinia in 980 BC.

Anyway, sandalwood played a significant role in the seduction arts of the Queen of Sheba. And so it is still today. Not that the scent is simply meant to make one horny, rather it can open a space in which a couple can open themselves to true love before merging…

I think that Serge Lutens, who now lives in Marrakech, was well aware of this legend when he immortalized sandalwood with this fragrance. Hats off, he absolutely succeeded.