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"Oud Stallion" shows the image of standing around a smoky fire in a previously wind-tanned jacket so that you don't freeze until you fall over and sleep next to the coking logs to smell heavenly the next day, unfortunately not as much as I initially hoped after reading the descriptions here.

Instead, he draws ambiguous pictures. There are some of archaic rawness, but also clear equestrian farm vibes.

I can smell the entrance area straight away: rotten half-timbered beams, stone floor, dirty straw from the boots of all those who have just mucked out. A whiff of iron, the tack room...
Clear smoke from a merry potato fire drifts in through the (stone) coal cellar window - a mundane place where, however, not at all mundane things happen, as all those who know a real "pony farm" probably know.

What bothers me a little bit about Oud Stallion is that little bit (!) too much potato. - I don't know where this aroma comes from, but you immediately have the delicious, black ball in the fire, which you scrape out with a branch and then peel off with increasingly crusty fingers to eat it unsalted...
Yes, yes, "Oud Stallion" is not a mega new scent experience of the science fiction kind, no, it smells familiar. - Quintessentially familiar.

But real horses remain invisible. With imagination, you can only smell the hoof tar a little. For me, the name rather indicates that you can celebrate masculine aspects of any kind with it. And just as tongue-in-cheek as the associative term "stallion" in the name promises.

All genders who want to can emphasize their respective sides and aspects of masculinity with it, or even bring them to the fore, because it is as unisex as anything: the archaic rawness of fire, earth and wind makes it superior to the occasional pigeonholing of us little people.
In other words: pomade, shower gel, aftershave (laugh) and even barbershop are completely absent - just like fruits or flowers, which, if they tried very hard, could pull it a little bit to the feminine side instead. That's why it's suitable for all genders - unless you're dealing with someone who wants to lean particularly far to the feminine side.

But Oud Stallion could also be recommended to them as an experimental foray into the world of unisex fragrances. "Oud Stallion" takes them along with understanding without immediately becoming a testosterone bomb.
It is not the monster (or even the child scare) that it is sometimes described as. - Unfortunately, I'd like to say: in addition to monstrosity of any kind, he also lacks monster-like durability ^^. Really now, no crap, we compared it. The stuff is actually gone in no time at all compared to really long-lasting fragrances.

The moderate, pleasant drydown remains on clothing for quite a long time, however, so that - attention, I'll try to come up with a final sentence - the coked potato that comes through from time to time and the price, which is just short of decadent, are the only real arguments against this beautiful fragrance.

ARR! Black Sea makes me think about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And about whether to enter it...

It was founded as a satire. But it's not really directed against religion as such. In other words, it is not so directly directed against the fact that humans are a species whose intelligence has gotten so out of hand that they have to invent religions (...in order to indulge in thousands of years of feuding - as divided as is typical of their species -), which would certainly be worth a satire or two.

But, nope. I think this particular satire serves more to demonstrate two things to said humanoids:

Firstly, what you can't imagine, you can imagine. Because if I imagine that I cannot imagine it at all, I have already imagined it ... in an extremely one-sided and very limited way.

Secondly, there should be more effective, friendlier, more objective, more useful and more contemporary alternatives to rules invented from subjective perspectives and dogmas devised by individuals, such as the Ten Commandments. -

To emphasize the "second", there are the eight "I'd really rather you didn't "s as a collection. (Besides that, I think there's only one rule, but I'll get to that in a moment.)

Clever humor goes with the fragrance: I take it from almost the entire course. But it could also be that it only seems that way to me because I don't know sea monsters like Megamare... Anyway. - Black Sea is what I expected from Ammare, and it's even funny: Nothing about Ammare reminds me of FSM, or even of pirates. But Black Sea does. Or, to put it another way, its salt belongs in there like in pasta water (which real pastafarians always have to salt). - ARR, is all I can say. -

A major pastafarian holiday in September is Pirate Day (... pirates were the first pastafarians) - and you end sentences with ARR. - So, everyone. I'm seriously thinking about trying this, so, give this holiday a go!
With Black Sea, of course. What else is there? If the bottling lasts that long.

Who knows what will happen between now and September. Anyway, tempting, tempting. "Let's see, let's see." Here I have once again quoted Eric Cartman - does anyone remember the South Park episode where he rides along with the pirates?

Or rather, the one with him? Kumma:

Black Sea doesn't reek of the watery-hard realistic-real buccaneer life of those who probably developed precursors to today's health insurance and are referred to in some sources as pioneers of democracy.
And certainly not the gruesome reality of modern-day piracy, the "other side" of which was shown almost shockingly honestly in the aforementioned South Park episode.

Instead, it smells heavenly of what Cartman initially imagined pirate life to be like. Indulgence, sun, singing, sand - it smells nice, I'd like to say. And above all, really now mah, the fattest s o m m e r l i c h .
In addition to the very nice salt already mentioned, which is neither fishy nor pepperminty nor otherwise inappropriately disgusting, I think I can smell the crushed leaves of a lemon-scented geranium almost the whole time - a smell that I liked as a child because it has a rather unusual citrus aroma without any citric sourness. (This seems to annoy me outside of pure fragrances such as Pamplelune, so it's nice that Black Sea almost manages without it.)

Only the end is bitter. During the first test wear, I had a healthy Netflix nap during the course, and when I was woken up from it by my favorite assistant for, let's just say, good reasons, my awakened consciousness was caught exactly in the middle of this chord, this boomy shot. And I just thought, guys, obviously the world is coming to an end -

Yup yup, it's merciless, that unexpected final chord. Bitter and powerful.
Unexpectedly bitter and powerful. And that's why it's reminiscent of the South Park episode - yes. I just wanted to say. - Well: Arrr ... ?

Oops, now I smell my Orchid Leather in the middle of the forest, hopefully its bitter harshness won't mask the sweet smells around me.
It's strange that I'm wearing it today anyway, in the middle of summer. I don't usually do that...
All right then.
Fortunately, everything harmonizes really nicely. The combination is f a s t as knotty, salty and green as I like it. Although, there's an invasive cedar somewhere, which doesn't belong in the Central European flora at all, surely escaped from some garden somewhere -

Yeah, ok ok, forest, forest, forest and so on. I get my leather jacket and boots out of the bushes and get on my bike, wanting to get back home. - - It's funny that I can't smell my old jacket at all ... but I can clearly sense that it's there!

Or is it not? - Really. That's strange. Well. - Oh, what a lovely summer lounge... Wait a minute, phew: the guy in front of me has a scented tree in his car and the windows rolled down all the way. Well, that's typical.
- Anyway, no problem, I'll just let myself fall back until I don't smell the stuff like that anymore...

...Yeah, yeah. Although I've stopped wearing a light jacket since the South Park episode so as not to look like a sixty-year-old with a behavioral problem, the rest could have happened in exactly the same way. But instead, I sat on the sofa in the middle of winter, sprayed Soul of the Forest again and revealed in the middle of the internet that I hide my stuff in front of the forest in summer when I don't have a car with me. Don't you dare! Don't you dare steal my boots. - All right. Glad that's cleared up, here are the facts.

Soul of the Forest is obviously not easy to order. The fragrance tree vibe comes back from time to time. The durability is quite nice, the sillage is passable according to witnesses today. Furthermore, said witnesses also found the overall impression really good. (General smiles & even a bounce (!) and, quote: "After Oreos". UOTT!? 'After Oreos'? What's wrong with children's noses?)
What can I say, the bottling has already been ordered.

But I don't need more than 10 ml, because it wasn't a 'WOW' effect. Fun Fact: My iPäd, so fussy that it underlines the stinkin' word "invasive", had nothing wrong with "grünfrech". Maybe it's broken? - Speaking of broken:
"Soul of the Forest" is not broken.

But it's also a shame. - "Fig leaf" - this always promises us that the scent is at least a little reminiscent of the withered leaves of my Bavarian mountain fig Zenzi (yes, I give some plants names). - I've been bringing it into the kitchen in late fall for twenty years so that for a few weeks it fills half the apartment with its somehow marzipan-like, yet very unique, dry, wonderful scent.
It has nothing green, nothing fresh, nothing fruity and can't be compared to anything else on this planet. Unfortunately, not even with any perfume that is supposed to be reminiscent of any plant parts of the fig tree... This time again... We still thought - woody, ok, - could be a nice addition to the fig leaves. But fiddlesticks, sweet tangerine takes center stage. Well

My mother had her own image of the Orient. It was superficial, fairytale-like, shaped by fairy tales, certainly typical of most Germans in the sixties, and by no means correct.
Today is better. So much of the Orient is coming to us today. So much so that everyone could actually take a closer look. WHICH - hardly anyone does - except me. I do that. Often. Even. But more on that later.

Yes, yes. When I hear the old, frowned upon word "Orient", who knows why it's frowned upon, after all it's even in "orient", I don't associate it with news and crisis areas. No, I think of people, even people who are extremely dear to me. I - then see faces. Like fade-ins. Mostly small ones. Many of them have fled the hail of bombs. But nobody thinks about that here. Fortunately. So they can be normal children again. And they are. Anyway, they, and nothing else, are my immediate association when I hear words like "Afghanistan", "Syria" or "Iran"...
That's why I sometimes smile automatically when I hear one of these words - all of which together refer to the area where my father comes from - as my mother knew very well at the time, but I didn't yet.

It's funny: my appearance never made me suspicious. - Today I can see that all the little hustle and bustle around me looks like me as a child... And in the old photos I can see how "different" I looked ...

But after all, other things were always important to me. - Because I was allowed to be young at a time when no one cared where anyone came from, when there were punks, new romantics, eco-freaks and metalheads and not Germans, Syrians or Ukrainians. And what else there was.

Anyway, my mother would have liked Santal Royal... It's like the missing link between the real Orient and the fairytale Orient, and it smells as if a younger, male version of me is sitting backwards on a horse, grinning cheekily - in the stable, perhaps after grooming - and eating Christmas cookies for some unknown reason. Maybe speculoos? In any case, you can smell the cheeky grin, the speculoos and the horse. But it's not a beautiful thoroughbred Arabian (I know what they smell like, I learned to ride one, I swear they smell a bit different from other horses), but a relatively small wooden back horse.

If you smell it carefully, you notice a lot of other things, rose maybe, peach is supposed to be in it, ok, but it doesn't matter - anyway, it's not "really oriental".

Neither am I.

But, kumma: when I'm in this particular area of this particular city, buying spices from the Syrian around the corner, drinking chai and eating sesame curls in the huge Turkish café and then getting a compliment on my perfume from the grinning Aramean man in whose store I buy cardamom for my coffee - and the comment that it smells "oriental" ... then I feel "right".

What's more, I find this small, almost unreal, but very real world around me "right".
Yes, it's not the "real" real Syria, Afghanistan, Arabia around me; but for me that means: it's not the one from the news, it's not broken, you see women, undisturbed traders, etc... So, does that make it less real?

That's the good thing, I realize every time that it's real too... Even if only tiny, like a living image.. Whenever I look around and see all the blue-eyed brown-skinned white-skinned brown-eyed messy people, where no one looks like the other, and look at all the undamaged, beautiful stores, one of which belongs to the grandparents of "my" children, who also somehow got away somewhere by the skin of their teeth, then sometimes it goes through my head that - Oops, now it's gone again.
Sometimes I catch this truth, and then it's gone again. Maybe one of you will catch it, this - what was I just writing about? Oh yes, perfume. Santal Royal has become my everyday fall-winter perfume because it fits me like a glove. And because sometimes a young Aramean who smells it grins knowingly and thinks he can tell that I'm not a "real" German either.
Whatever that means.