Tabu 1932 Eau de Cologne

Tabu (Eau de Cologne) by Dana
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8.0 / 10 308 Ratings
A popular perfume by Dana for women, released in 1932. The scent is oriental-spicy. Projection and longevity are above-average. It is still in production.
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Main accords

Oriental
Spicy
Animal
Floral
Woody

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes Top Notes
SpicesSpices BergamotBergamot CorianderCoriander NeroliNeroli OrangeOrange
Heart Notes Heart Notes
CloveClove JasmineJasmine Oriental roseOriental rose Ylang-ylangYlang-ylang CloverClover NarcissusNarcissus
Base Notes Base Notes
AmberAmber BenzoinBenzoin CivetCivet MuskMusk PatchouliPatchouli OakmossOakmoss SandalwoodSandalwood CedarCedar VetiverVetiver

Perfumer

Ratings
Scent
8.0308 Ratings
Longevity
8.5255 Ratings
Sillage
8.0251 Ratings
Bottle
6.6234 Ratings
Value for money
9.272 Ratings
Submitted by Sani, last update on 21.02.2024.

Reviews

19 in-depth fragrance descriptions
8
Pricing
7
Bottle
7
Sillage
8
Longevity
8.5
Scent
Ponticus

28 Reviews
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Ponticus
Ponticus
Top Review 61  
Girls' Night Out - I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Jackie, our all hairdresser, was once again the most attentive. One had forgotten the carnival! This message to the wartsab group of girls' evening he connected at the same time with the suggestion that it was not too late and that one should dare to dive into the milieu, the ambience of the courtesans and sutlers and to appreciate his favorite perfume, Tabu by Dana. Of course, he also thought, not entirely altruistically, of the fine possibilities of disguises and fashions for the evening. The proposal was unanimously accepted, also mindful of the fabulous memory of last year's spectacular Poseidon evening of aquatic scents, pirate disguises and Neptune's baptism of the equator. The accompanying prosecco cocktail with oil sardine was a real challenge for each of the baptized!

On said evening, each newly arriving "concubine" was personally greeted by Jackie. With a deft twirl or two, he modelled his scarlet chancel dress with attached bodice and wide bat sleeves each time. With each turn he spread a distinctive, oriental scent of the mystical Orient, of dreams from 1001 nights, very spicy, warm, flowery-sweet and exotic. This smell was meanwhile over the entire room, because all the girls had received in the meantime some splashes of Tabu from him.

Melody Vögele-Schmitz, our old 68er appeared in a used batik dress from her Sturm und Drang festival phase (and the dress still fit, how enviable). She already knew Tabu from that time. After spraying, her stuffy VW bus became an oriental gem, powerful, clove-spicy as if on fat earth, infused with fruity florals and sweet exoticism. One thought the rusty car would break apart at night because of the violent movements, the depth and heaviness of the eroticizing scent with the now fine resinous, warm-woody, still spicy and peppered with dark vanilla further development of the smell. In its course, the light animalism of Tabu and Melody's meowing hangover also found their place.

The pharmacist Mrs. Dr. Pille, so our Susi, came in wide harem or Pluderhosen and imagined after a few glasses of Prosecco directly in the harem of a seraglio, not so much because of the Sultan but because of the idea of her attracting, erotic ladies in it. Musty, fruity sweetness and a bit of herbaceous freshness immediately exploded in a spicy-floral eruption into an intense, oriental-spicy-earthy scent of beguiling radiance. Her wish the harem succumb to the following sensual-erotic, animalistic tentacles of the smell of taboo and in woody-warm, dark-spicy depth then dissolves any restraint of the ladies longed for by Susi.

Optician Klara Sicht, today with nickel glasses and dressed in latex and leather, gave the perfect dominatrix, in which she had slipped mentally already often times. And she knew about her attraction and that of Tabu. A splash for her, hostile, mysterious, not intrusive but already appealing. Two splashes intensely exotic, already exciting but still restrained. Four splashes well distributed and the evening can come, good 6-7 hours, spicy orientalism, seductive like the scent of an Arabian bazaar. Two / three spritzes in the right places relaid, beguiling deep eroticism until the warm spicy wake up and the certainty, the dream can begin again!

Ilse, the former boss of the kiosk with attached post office, sewing and ironing service and one of the elders, had "disguised" herself as a German Fräuleinwunder and stood for the young, attractive and desirable woman of the late post-war and economic miracle period, whom in particular the American G.I., far from home, was happy to meet.
She, child of a Silesian refugee family, had the first of these encounters very early on and the result, her son, is now her successor and manager of her kiosk. Times were hard then, Ilse alone with her son, life expensive and complicated. The kind soldiers brought over many good things, from coffee to medicine, things that ensured both of their survival.
At one point, a G.I. also left a bottle of perfume. It was taboo of Dana. She remembered exactly her first uses of that scent. With the strong earthy clove, heavy and warm at the same time, as well as the intense, sweet floral aura, Tabu, also with an animalistic frivolous note, covered many a bad smell of damp corners in dingy rooms. It also made Ilse feel nobler and more desirable than she often felt and supported the gentlemen's bounty. So when she woke up at sunrise in her little chamber in her somewhat clammy bed next to her little son, she still felt snuggled up in the slowly fading, now darkly vanilla and sultry warm smell that made her dream of better times.
After a good two years Ilse made the jump to a normal life, but even now she looks back on that time without shame, bitterness, resentment or regret. Tonight for girls' night out, she looked quite fantastic. A flower trimmed petticoat dress, balerinas, Betty Page hairdo and a pink bandana gave a glimpse of the beauty and strength that was possible and often necessary during those times.

After Ilse's tales, things quietened down a little, the air was sweetly spiced and vanilla sprinkles flashed from time to time in the dresses. The prosecco-supported dreams and longings gave way to the certainty of the real journey home and turned into newly refuelled courage for everyday life.

Where would we be without our wishes, desires, imaginations? Thank you for reading!
49 Comments
10
Pricing
9
Sillage
9
Longevity
10
Scent
FvSpee

249 Reviews
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FvSpee
FvSpee
Top Review 52  
Colonial Goods XXIV - George's Discovery
In 1772, Captain James Cook set off on his second voyage of discovery to the South Seas. He engaged the Russian-German scholar Reinhold Forster as his chief scientific companion, who insisted on taking along his 17-year-old son Georg as his assistant. Georg was already on his way to becoming a precocious polymath himself and had already published his first book at the age of thirteen.

Incidentally, if Georg Forster did not later become as famous as Alexander von Humboldt, for example, with whom he could certainly measure up, it was for two reasons: When the French revolutionary troops conquered Mainz in 1792, where Forster had in the meantime been active at the university, he joined the German Jacobins who proclaimed the Mainz Republic and - unlike Schiller - remained loyal to the cause of the revolution until the end. Ostracized as a traitor to the fatherland after the interim success of the coalition forces against France, he went to France, and his memory has been suppressed, basically to this day, in Germany. Added to this, he died already in 1794, still young, in sickness and misery, abandoned by his wife and grieved by the ever-increasing horrors of revolutionary terror.

But back to the South Sea voyage that began in 1772: The young George undertook very sensitive, sophisticated ethnological observations of the native peoples of the South Seas and also brought back to Europe some linguistic material, including the term "tapu", which in one of the Polynesian languages denoted something sacred but at the same time something forbidden.

This is how the word "taboo" came to Europe, but it didn't really take off with its stellar career until Sigmund Freund's book "Totem and Taboo" in 1913. 150 years after Forster, the sound of Sigmund's texts went quite a bit more awkwardly in the direction of 'primitive savages', which might give rise to small question marks to the theses of the constant progress of enlightenment and the enlightenment impetus of psychoanalysis. In his book, Freud postulated connections between ethnological findings (such as the taboos in the South Seas) with psychoanalytic concepts (e.g. obsessive-compulsive neurosis) and, as usual, traced everything back to sex and incest.

Almost no one really understood the details even then, but in any case the concept of taboo, both erotically and exotically charged, was thus guaranteed a stellar career. This will still have been the case in 1932, when the Spanish perfume grandmaster Jean Carles created this milestone in the history of fragrances: sex sells and big wide world sells too.

Let's dwell on the name for a bit: A taboo is something forbidden, and of course it is always tempting to break the taboo, to violate the prohibition. Since this is usually associated with social ostracism or even imprisonment in real life, it comes just right when we are allowed to feel like real taboo breakers after paying the possible purchase price by tearing open a perfume package. Perhaps this is another reason why names of this kind are quite popular in the industry: 'L'Interdit' by Givenchy, after all, because of the definite article, doesn't mean "forbidden" but "ban, taboo". And funnily enough, there is also a small unknown niche perfume 'Verboten', perfumer is none other than Marie LeFebvre known from her own label "Urban Scents". I don't know a fragrance called 'Schtonk' yet, though. Comes perhaps yet.

Tabu opens from zero to a hundred in a tenth of a second with quite big cinema, maximum splendor development of flowers, spices and not recorded but felt aldehydes, over which lattice-like highly concentrated citrus extracts are hammered over. This creates the impression of a combination of impressions that do not fit together; we have here, so to speak, an olfactory contradictio in adiecto: we have warm freshness, precise voluptuousness, friendly aggression, clear and sharp voluptuousness. In the first hour, I perceive Tabu as a kind of chyroid cologne; indeed, a kinship with the cologne concept (although this fragrance is supposed to be just a reduced, haha, concentration of the EdT of the same name).

The fragrance then goes through a round of transformations: After an hour, it impresses more amber, massive, matte, grounded and liqueur-like, then almost sultry. After three hours, you smell a gurgling and purring animalism against a backdrop of overripe fruit. Still later, brassy and soft still, sharper and greener notes seem to dominate again.

A single spray of this 'cologne' easily covers 5 sprays of any EdP from Le Labo, and it boasts a longevity of at least 8 hours, more likely more. The price is a joke.

Tabu has been bullish on this forum, after 0 reviews in 2019 and 1 in 2020, mine is already the sixth this year, and it's just May. That's not wrong, as Tabu by Dana (much has been written about this highly interesting brand elsewhere) is a fragrance historical landmark that every perfume aficionado should have encountered at some point. Just as anyone interested in the natural sciences and the humanities should also take a look at Georg Forster at some point.
32 Comments
10
Pricing
6
Bottle
10
Sillage
8
Longevity
10
Scent
Manu79

11 Reviews
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Manu79
Manu79
Very helpful Review 31  
whitout a taboo
New Orleans, in the 1940s.
A nightclub....
The air impregnated with smoke, heavy perfumes, furs and sweat.
Everyone is waiting for the appearance of a legend Dorothy Dandrige ( Tabu is also said to have been one of her favorite fragrances) ....
She enters the stage in a stunning dress, the jewelry shines in the spotlight, Dorothy stands in front of the microphone, a glance at the crowd, the first sound.....
The audience goes wild.....

A fragrance that is able to evoke times long past and yet so modern.
Taboo is
heavy,
sultry,
sensual,
erotic,
sexy,
With orange, clove, rose, patchouli, amber, sandalwood and musk...

A fragrance that turns men's heads and makes the woman goddess.
one of the most beautiful fragrances ever created
DREAMFUL

5 Comments
jtd

484 Reviews
jtd
jtd
Top Review 10  
old school
I had an ah-ha moment when I tried vintage Tabu for the first time. Suddenly Youth Dew, Opium and Coco made perfect sense---they were descendants of Tabu. Perfumer Jean Carles approach seems based on the premise that if the oriental genre is built from forceful materials and ferocious tones, why disguise it with tassels and trim? Why try to tame it?

Tabu backs up its vaguely threatening name with a strapping, seductive fragrance. It's an intimidating perfumes. The combination of aggressive, spiced florals and powdered leather is just one example of the hard/soft conflict seeded throughout Tabu. (Spoiler alert: the hard edge always wins.) Tabu investigates olfactory extremes without dicking around with the comfortable center. Vanillic amber oriental perfumes often dive straight for the soft middle ground and wind up a bit eye-glazey. The trap for the perfumer is emphasizing coziness at the expense of spine and coming up with olfactory comfort food.

Tabu’s dense powdery opening is in fact sweet but it’s a red herring. As the sweetness of the topnote settles, the acerbic edge of the spiced resin accord comes forward to create a fascinating counterbalance. The powder lasts well into the long-arc heartnotes and the way that it’s cantilevered off the bitter base of resins focusses attention more on texture than aroma. The cinnamon-clove spices have a similarly tricky balancing act. They alternate between hot and cold without ever dwindling to lukewarm. Carles seems willing to concede the aesthetic middle ground, finding more value at the ends of the spectrum. Tabu is technically an oriental but had as much in common with the big tobacco and leather perfumes of the 20s and 30s as it did with the recumbent Shalimar. No fear of lack of spine here.

Jacques Guerlain’s Shalimar is considered the superlative oriental perfume, and for valid reasons. It has superior form and elaborate, sophisticated style. It also has a larger-than-life Auntie Mame quality. Next to Shalimar's layered, accessorized style, Tabu cames off as starched and corseted. Carles’ style was less opulent than Guerlain’s but not a bit less complex. Carles differed from Guerlain in that he found that the richness of the oriental was not in the drape but in the tailoring.

(from scenthurdle.com)
0 Comments
6
Bottle
7
Sillage
8
Longevity
8.5
Scent
Mantus

198 Reviews
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Mantus
Mantus
Helpful Review 12  
Oriental Attractive Femininity
At first one can perceive an intensive deep spicy note, which gives the top note something pleasantly conspicuous and is to be owed to the coriander.

At the same time the coriander is accompanied by a fine, sweetish fruity note, which ensures that the top note gets something soft and comes from the orange.

These two notes are covered in a delicate flowery nuance, which brings something discreetly herbes with it and in my opinion is responsible for the fact that the top note seems heavy, but at the same time light and comes from the neroli.

In the background there is a subtle citric nuance that gives the top note a very light refreshing touch and I actually picked lemon instead of bergamot.

In the citric nuance there is an ethereal, slightly sweetish nuance which harmonizes very well with the other notes and I suspect tarragon here.

This constellation is noticeable on my skin for 20 minutes before the heart note unfolds.

Now an intense spicy, peppery note reminiscent of pimento is to be perceived, which gives the fragrance a very striking markance without drifting into the masculine and the clove is to be owed.

The clove blends with a very nice strong, slightly fleshy rosy note, which gives the fragrance an oriental and appealing female aura and unfortunately I do not say exactly which rose it is.

These two notes are surrounded by a fine sweetish floral note, which gives the heart note an incredible volume and comes from ylang-ylang.

In the very background a tender light floral nuance supports the other notes and is in my opinion responsible for the fragrance being literally lifted up into the air and coming from jasmine.

The entire heart note is immersed in a creamy aura, so that one can already be a little of the opinion that one has applied oneself the smell in form of a Bodybutter and I here on highly concentrated Iris, instead of on Narzisse have tapped.

Unfortunately I could not see Klee, but I can imagine very well that this component was used for background music.

The heart note is perceptible on my skin for 5 hours before the basis prevails.

The base has a dense sweet, spicy note, which gives the fragrance a wonderfully cuddly aura and is due to the amber.

At the same time, a fine, creamy, vanilla-like note is to be perceived, which btingt a very delicate chocolaty touch with itself and the cuddly aura wonderfully potentiates and comes from the benzoin.

These two notes are wrapped in a beautiful, clear, light mossy note and come from EIchenmoos in combination with musk.

A soft wooden nuance is perceptible in the background, which gives the fragrance something pleasantly smooth and is due to the cedar wood.

These fragrances are surrounded by a beautiful inviting warming note, which acts like a caress and can only be the civet.

Unfortunately I could not see patchouli, sandalwood and vetiver, but I can imagine very well that these components were used for completion.

In total the scent holds 8.5 hours on my skin.

The Sillage is designed in the first hour in such a way that one is clearly perceived to the 1.5 meters and then settles 3 hours on a very clearly perceptible whole arm length, before it reduces until the end of the smell in calm steps.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to our perfume "Zirkeltanz" for the bottling.
4 Comments
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Statements

2 short views on the fragrance
ZoikgreeceZoikgreece 4 years ago
4
Bottle
8
Sillage
8
Longevity
6
Scent
You'd better listen to "cheap smell" by Covacs. Whatever Dana touches is forever destroyed. What a pity!
0 Comments
DorothyGraceDorothyGrace 8 years ago
Black bottle is very pretty. The perfume behaves well on my skin. Not the original but wearable and enjoyable. Oh for the good old days.
0 Comments

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