Ttfortwo

Surprise: I would have thought that many more fragrances would be named after dances.

After dances, especially couple dances, the most sensual of all movements tolerated in public by general social standards, with the whole spectrum of courtship, controlled closeness, controlled distance. It was not uncommon for me to see obese people who knew how to float in a flowing and elegant manner and suddenly appeared entrancingly sensual and rousingly happy.

So I would have expected a lot more perfumes that picked up the names of dances and made use of them. Well, the 'waltz' can be called three times, 'waltz' and 'valse' a few more times, also the highly erotic 'tango', which translates the dialogue of dominance and devotion into strictly structured and formal movements, occurs a few times, as does the 'samba'. The lascivious 'Rumba', on the other hand, only appears six times, perhaps because the dance is more sensual than its name suggests, but still.

A "Lambada", on the other hand, actually exists only once, namely in the version by Harry Lehmann. That's not quite true, there is a second somewhat crude hit, about which almost nothing is known at all, furthermore with a mysterious "Paolo Conti" - not "Conte" in the name. We can probably neglect that one

Maybe that's just as well, because my memory of this dance is not a completely unclouded one.

Sometime - was it the '90s? - we all suddenly danced the Lambada, this tight and almost stationary danced and completely unashamedly sensual rotating sex application, you had to manage that somehow back then, as dancers and as danced. Woe betide you if you danced lambada with the wrong partner, I remember situations of downright bottomless embarrassment, in which I had to let myself be jerked over the parquet by (on their part probably also quite desperate) stiff-hiped and helpless body lice, or even dance partners who quite obviously found me highly sexy (and also made no effort whatsoever not to let me feel this circumstance in all clarity) - but I didn't. Ahhh, head cinema!

The smell is not embarrassing. But neither is it highly erotic, it is much, much more harmless than the name would suggest. It belongs to the somewhat sweeter and softer Lehmänner, and I am absolutely sure - because of the scent and not only because of the name - that it cannot come from the beginnings of the house of Lehmann. It completely lacks the somewhat shaggy independence and recognizability that characterizes the earlier fragrances. I think "Lambada" is really a child of its time, the 90s, maybe even of the earlier 00s.

Lehmann's Lambada starts with a soft and bizarre freshness, even a little bit herbaceous. Lemon balm is mentioned, that fits, lemon balm maybe, which often gives me a hint of lemon and grape sugar bars. In addition, almost from the beginning a soft, chubby and tender sweet warmth.

This warmth (tonka? vanilla?) carries the fragrance for the longest time, along with a quite massive floral in the heart, which I cannot determine in more detail. The fragrance becomes more ambry and slightly spicy over time, I can't make out powder, at least it doesn't dominate me. Fortunately the sweetness, which even becomes quite clear in the course of time, remains on the sticky side at all times, which is also typical for the floral valleys of this time.

In this respect, this fragrance is definitely recommended for testing by friends* of classic and contemporary floral valleys who are interested in a not too independent, rather ideal-typical representative of its genus. Unisex, even though the fragrance was certainly composed for women at the time.

Last but not least:
I do not know if Lambada had to be reformulated last year. Anyway, my bottle was bought before that, in November 2018. H&S are - as always with Lehmann - very tidy.

The majority of the pre-commentators describe the scent in a very different way than I will do with this one. The clarity with which I perceive the scent differently, sometimes diametrically different, leads me to suspect that I may not smell some aspects at all or, on the contrary, that I perceive individual components excessively strongly. It is possible that I reflect and associate parts of the composition differently than most of the pre-commentators. Therefore, my review should perhaps be seen more as a supplement and extension to the other comments.

By the way, I would like to emphasize here that I like the scent quite well, I do not want to tear it at all.

The first impression: Powerful, dark, dull, with musty and stuffy aspects (hohoho!, Susanne, you're just throwing a truckload of gloves on the floor!), but in a strangely familiar and homely, cosy way. Not unpleasant at all. As an analogy and explanation, the smell of my parents' house comes to my mind, a creamy, thickened smell of my own, concentrated over decades - musty in a certain way and yet not negatively attributed, at least for me, but on the contrary, arousing the most beautiful, most familiar feelings.

For a long time the impression of a dull dark red, velvet, not beaten out for a long time, strongly sweetened, creamy and dense. Pleasant dustiness. No glow, no floating - rather an enigmatic glow, a warm, heavy cape.

I can't actually make out any fresh or clean aspects at any time.

But I like the animal-powdery calm and embracing warmth with which the lazy and lascivious scent develops in slow motion. Now, and also more and more towards the base note, I find the fragrance as comforting, friendly, familiar like my husband's skin.

And this is how I would probably wear it: At home alone with my husband, as a lazy, fragrant mirror of thirty years of familiarity, oh how comfortable I feel in the evening and I love to smell you. Always.

Last train: I have a manufacturer's test - so it can't be a mix-up. The durability is enormous, projection and sillage moderate to visible. The specimen can stay with me.

If I hadn't read FvSpee's quite wonderful commentary a long time ago, long before I was allowed to smell Indochine 25 for the first time - I would probably have felt like him at first.

Vietnamese friends had invited us to discover their old homeland together with them. We spent almost four weeks travelling together, were introduced to the families, lived there many a day as guests in their houses, ate almost exclusively either with the families or on the street, also things (and animals) that are not always completely compatible with Central European eating habits, delicious flat cakes made from bristle worms living on the seabed for example. We got wheezing coughs in the exhaust gas-impregnated air of Hanoi and circulation problems in the sauna infusion heat (40° ++) of Saigon. We fed, smelled, felt and marveled our way through Vietnam, guided by our friends who opened doors for us and a rich, new world of knowledge. Everything smells, smells, stinks, one nasal sensation after the other, intensified by the sultry damp heat and unfortunately often enough sensation shifted by heat headaches or slight circulatory problems.

Indochine 25 is quite different. Probably I would have located the scent in a desert context, Namib or Australian outback perhaps, in the late morning possibly, in the short transition period from nightly cold to daytime heat. It smells of dry wood, rustling dried grasses and bitter honey. It is dust-dry and also somewhat dusty, hovering around the wearer with bitter-mild, delicately spicy and dry-sweet resinousness and - and I am more than happy to quote here, because FvSpee always finds them, the words that cannot be found better - of a soft, wise and mildly resigned melancholy.

Fortunately, the rotten leather association does not come about due to lack of rotten leather experience, but I recognize the medicinal herbal note described several times at the beginning, the only moment in the course of the fragrance, which could somehow remind me of the exuberant, belligerent, noisy, and moist scents of Vietnam, of the often medicated and soapy tasting herbs, which are served with almost every dish in an unbelievable variety.

For me, Indochine is a fantastic office fragrance precisely because of its light wistfulness, its fine, clarified transparency and its hint of unsweet sweetness - if carefully dosed at least. To have him and to carry him makes me happy in a strange way.

Last train:
The durability is just about right, after a good four hours there is not much left to smell on my skin, but on my clothes the smell lasts until the working afternoon. Projection and sillage are very moderate after a brilliant start.

Dear Serenissima, thank you very much for the sample - without you I would have missed a wonderful fragrance.

Prehistory in short: read comments here, flirted briefly with paradigm change (fundamental rejection of any sweetness in fragrances), immediately rejected, saw fragrance at TKMaxx and then bought it nevertheless. First, second, third test: Oh Gottele, oh no, oh dear. Too sweet. Way too. Bottle in OVP and everything together in the cupboard, at the very back.

And then Helena comes along and dedicates a gossamer-like pastel poem to the fragrance, in love and floating, made of spun sugar and spun words.

What else could I do but give the scent another chance?

The top note is and remains a challenge for my nose, love-pearl sweet, fluffy angora pulp cuddles in pink-pink, powdery sugar sweetness. The beautiful and freshly flowered bergamot I capture only with the nose directly on the skin, it has no distant effect.

I'm so sorry, lovers of muse poudrée, but the top note...

I see collectors of collector dolls in front of me, who arrange their porcelain children so carefully and with infinite love in lace-braided apartments around wooden cradles, with pastel bows and rosebud patterns. Just as the collector doll collector seems to me to be more of a sensitive, perhaps lonely, but not coarse woman, the top note is not coarse despite the overpowering sweetness. She's like the bows in the dolls' hair: Lovingly arranged and pastel coloured. Just way too much of it.

Now we have to wait, because very gradually, and this is actually a little bit magical, the scent starts to change: He's growing up. The sweetness becomes spicier, drier, the pink more antique, the love pearls become violet dragees. Over the next few hours, the cotton candy retreats to the second row, not that it ever gives up, but it now gives way to others, the vanilla flirts in the most delicate and endearing way with an airy powdery note, the fragrance becomes warmer, darker and velvety.

Thus the muse remains spicy-powdery vanilla creamy and dark sweet, long, persistent, very audible, until after many hours it dawns in soft vanilla spice and soft silvery musk powdery.

The power of words: Without Helena's delicate web of words I would not have given the fragrance a second chance. Certainly not

What remains: A fragrance for very few occasions, just for me alone, after a long and for me challenging run-up, finally cuddly and comforting, like lovingly homemade vanilla crescents.

S&H above average, price budget.

The first test of "Au Coeur du Désert" - and under real conditions in the (open-plan) office. As for my colleagues: I lack a little pity, because normally I do not work on Fridays, but because of sick and vacationing colleagues now but and the others should of course also suffer, if I already have to do it. So: No pardon, no empathically selected office fragrance, gentle and restrained, no, today I let it rip. No risk - no fun. Tauers desert planet.

Right now, I'm actually happy about the residual scruple that was still present this morning when I applied it, and that I only gave a single, rather cautious spray in the direction of the neck, scarf and sweater hem. The whole thing was almost an hour ago now, as I write these words, and I'm sitting here in a gigantic cloud of fragrance. A projection as big as the Namib.

This is most definitely one of the most idiosyncratic fragrances I own, the friend of old perfume art with classic signatures, and also the one that breaks the most with their time-honored principles. It is not so much a perfume as an epic narrative.

Halfway binding to the traditional idea of a top note, the "Desert Heart" smells only in the opening: a bit floral, with a touch of plant sap and stem and a delicate bitter sweetness. It tells of an oasis, of a rose, of its fragrance, of the smell of hot rock, hot sand, moistened for the purpose of cooling. Of resins and of bittersweet honey, gathered by small wild bees.

It is not yet hot, the morning sun paints long shadows.

The pace of the narrative is slow. Very gradually, step by step, I wander on with the narrator, we leave behind the last irrigated fields and also the last shadow. It becomes warmer, then it becomes hot. He tells me of wild beauty, of the silhouette lines of the horizon in the distance, of mountain flanks shimmering violet, of the dance of the heat air over ocher, over dark orange, over violet, over blood red and over all shades of brown, of light so bright that it seems black. We look at stone lines, mineral-oily shimmering, feldspar mica. Spiny resinous scented plant heroes, survivors in nothingness. Dry wood with falber color and silky shimmer, who knows how old it is.

We wander. But time stands still.

About three hours after application, the fragrance also seems to have come to a standstill. The sun is still high, the colors are faded, withered in the heat. I smell dusty-salty ambergris and mineral sandstone notes, dry warm resins with subtle sweetness. I smell warm woods and dry earth. It smells good, the scent likes me, is friendly to me. On the skin, delicately sweet-warm-powdery - on the clothes, rather dusty-warm-mineral. Own and beautiful. The presence is still enormous, effortlessly the fragrance fills my nose with every breath, with every little movement puffs a bright little cloud, with a matte texture and warm unctuous fragrance color.

Once again many hours later the narrator and I are sitting on a rock, we are tired, the day was long. The narrator has almost fallen silent, he speaks only a little and in a low voice, but it also no longer needs words. We have become familiar on the road together, many words are not necessary now. Soon the sun will set and it will get cold. I put a scarf around me, get up and go.

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Last but not least: The hardcore test in the open-plan office didn't go wrong. No one has made a wide berth around me or near me - as if by chance - constantly rubbed his nose with his hand. However, no one has been enthusiastic about my daytime scent either. I think for me it is a vitrine fragrance after all. Precious and gladly smelled, but in the end but not worn.

The durability is exceptional and the sillage in the first hour gigantic, then still for many hours clearly.