0.7 miles is the distance from the Judd Foundation HQ in Marfa, Texas to the El Cosmico campground. 0.6 miles is the distance from the Judd Foundation in NYC to the Durga Shop a few streets away. In both cases, about a mile. New York, October 2019: pouring rain, all taxis occupied, umbrellas sold out on every corner, the danger of getting splashed wet despite gridlocked traffic - increased; in this weather, on the way elsewhere happen to see the brightly lit, D.S. & DURGA 'flagship' store, diagonally across the street, a welcome shelter in this downpour and cause for lightning inspection. To date I've only come across Durga perfumes in Europe sporadically or in popular three/four groupings, the re-design of the flat, slightly oval flacons into cylindrical of all worlds bottles I didn't catch, not to mention the range on this scale.
The deeply American image in the title, narratives, and ingredients was never as appealing to me as the similarly iconicized take on Americana, suburbia, landscape, and scenes in Robert Ashley's music, but something still cast the company quite well for me. An olfactory analogue to holistic supermarkets, originally with attitude à la Wholefoods or the local paragons of these.
While quick-testing, I was able to recall a few familiar scents, all of which have aged nicely, but I got stuck with El Cosmico, which breaks out or stands out from the Durga homeliness. The prelude is downright pungent, chemical solvent and organic pesticide at the same time, lightly waxy.
The plants, which offer guidance as notes, certainly have plenty of such compounds in and around them, the best protection against predators in the desert home. Creosote bush, gale bush (red list), bishop's weed - great names and ingredients I have not yet come across are supposed to be at work here and perhaps this organic solvent is so well paraphrased, it becomes more concrete with a type of pine and artificial oak - here I have to think again and again of Artek's Standard with its light and thoroughly synthetic wood workshop. Sand here too: the industrial-effect dryness recalls Synarome's Aldambre, which sets the tone at Ultræ. Overall, El Cosmico largely oscillates between synthetic and a textured 'organicness' complete with scrub-swallow fire at midday. Floyd's rain hallucination trip captures this very well.
Despite the amusingly caustic opening, the exotic desert flora, another reality flashes through from time to time, reminding that this is ultimately also a hotel fragrance. This ungenre has conditioned a few good ones over the years: Andrée Putman's first perfume was answer to her lobby of the Pershing Hall in Paris, the Italian Artistos of Eau d'Italie have their origins in a cosmetics line for the hotel, all quite and in part very good, were it not for the trend of perfumed lobbies - by which I mean not potpourris or floral bouquets, but, dry, synthetic-conventional wood scents, since the middle of the 2000's increasingly in use, which transform even the grindest hotels - so also in New York - into a supposedly fragrant something with the choicest building materials. For a perfume from a New York company released in 2015, a faux-pas; fortunately, these moments are kept in check.
Back in the flagship store, whose interior design, like so much else, brings to mind the aesthetics and volumes of Donald Judd's projects, outfitted with El Cosmico, back in the rain. El Cosmico is perhaps because it's an extremely narrow and shallow band of variation overall, and one that plays in little depth, one of the few coniferous perfumes that doesn't bloom in the heat. On cooler days, this idiosyncratic campsite eau is in the right place.
Top Notes 
Heart Notes 
Base Notes 
Jvorlicek
Penhanin
Ch03np
Gavarrus
Holscentbar
