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Notes11/24/2019
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Duftsucht
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Duftsucht
Greatly helpful Review 17
The Summoning of the Desert Djinn
The name "Taklamakan" alone, in combination with the golden, luxurious bottle, creates a picture of fragrance in my imagination. Warm and dry, it will carry with it the mineral smell of sand and perhaps smoke. Is there a well or an oasis nearby? No, that's not what the word sounds like to me, it sounds like vastness, emptiness, sublimity. Perhaps it is a fragrance of the night when the starry sky above the pure desert air shines so brightly on some nights that I can see my own shadow? Or perhaps the djinni I fear in perfumes lives in the bottle after all - namely oud, which I still smell in traces myself and which (so far, but I doubt that this will change) regularly lets me flee.
I'm certainly not the only one who can make out a certain picture of how the content will smell based solely on the name, the bottle or the colour of a fragrance. And Taklamakan fulfils my expectations, plays with them, surpasses them and at the same time leaves the longing for more open. That's the first thing you have to do as a fragrance.
When spraying on I spontaneously think: "resin patchouli" - so not wrong for my fragrance preferences. At the same time, however, there is an immediate hint of freshness and something herbaceous and aromatic that opens the first impression and gives hope for more.
Two fragrances that I have come across so far go in a similar direction for me: Bois d'Arménie by Guerlain and Coromandel by Chanel. And yet the three are fundamentally different. Bois d'Arménie is much woodier, less resinous-aromatic and the freshness hidden in Taklamakan is completely missing here. The desert scent shares the patchouli with Coromandel. At Coromandel it is much more natural and present, earthier, cooler cellar, while Patchouli in Taklamakan is wrapped in a soft coat of sweet resin and vanilla. Maybe that's why Taklamkan is also worth a try for people who aren't real patchouli fetishists. For all who fear oud as much as I do, this is good news. Although in Taklamakan there is hidden something dirty, dark, slightly disturbing, almost animalistic, it is so subliminal, that even for me Animalik-und Oud-Memme it is not too much, but simply wonderful!
The way Patchouli is finely woven in Taklamakan brings me straight to the next point: the sweetness. Here, too, the scent surprises. It is sweet and dry at the same time - or maybe unsweet-vanilla and sweet-aromatic-resinous after all? Depending on what my perception concentrates on, different layers of the scent come to the fore, like a desert wind that brings scents from all directions from far away. Sometimes it's the mineral clash of hot sand that has a characteristic smell that one can almost taste more than smell, made to float by ethereal translucent smoke. The resin of crippled small bushes, which release spicy aromas in the scorching sun, mixes with it and it almost seems to me as if sometimes flowers from the far away oasis could be guessed at.
Now one should think that, after this, as I like to admit, somewhat overflowing hymn of praise Taklamakan immediately ascended with enthusiasm to my new darling, who from now on often accompanies me, my dreamy desert wind. And yet it is not so. For me it is (once again) a fragrance that I admire, but which I don't want to smell of as a person all day long. Then he is too much for me, too present and also too long staying in one phase.
But at the weekend, sprayed on my wrist to take a deep breath while walking, shopping or reading, to dream of the glistening sun, of faraway lands, of unfulfilled desires and of the possibilities that hopefully lie ahead of me: Yes, it's just the scent my heart longs for!
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