Cafeliberte

There are scents that instantly take you to other places.
Often they are memories of places you have visited and which the scent evokes, and with only one spray you immediately travel there again. But they can also be places one dreams of, the wanderlust elicits a deep sigh, and the imagination conjures up the most beautiful images before one's inner eye. Even if in reality everything may be completely different. But it is nice when dream ideas make it possible to surrender for a short moment to a daydream that awakens longings and gives consolation, confidence, joy or distraction.

For me, Méharées triggers a journey into a distant and strange world that is still completely unknown to me. The sun determines life and is omnipresent. Nature is powerful and brings man to his limits. An interplay between a glowing hot desert sun and a starry night sky.
It is probably a very special melancholy that a person only experiences on his own body when he is seized by the vastness of the desert.

Méharées was in my hands for the first time when I was in Venice in winter. Very clichéd, but camels immediately trigger fabulous images of the Arabian Nights in me. The Méharées bottle doesn't score with extravagance, but I like the bottle because it doesn't show off, isn't richly decorated, but simply takes its place very calmly.
I had only sniffed at the bottle and was skeptical. I wanted to like him, but somehow he smelled like liquorice, and I can't stand liquorice. So I carefully decided for the shower gel and tested it in the bathtub of our hotel room. So there I was, after miles and miles of walking through the damp and cold Venice, pampering my maltreated feet and cold skin with a bubble bath that smelled of Méharées. I indulged in this fragrance and dreamed myself into a bathroom with mosaic decorated walls.
During my next stay in Italy and my visit to L'Erbolario I wanted to like him so much that I simply took the bottle with me.
On a warm evening in Tuscany, when the sun bathed the hills in terracotta light, I sprayed it before dinner. I still noticed something I felt at the time to be licorice-like, a hint of liquorice. How deliciously warm the scent lay on the skin like a veil of gold woven through it. Cinnamon, dates, myrrh, resin and dark woods - this is how Méharées smells to me. That's not even in the fragrance pyramid, but what counts in the end is the own perception that makes up the perfume. For me, it's not a gourmand, not a classic oriental. It is spicy-warm, the light sweetness is like golden resin and almost tart. I don't even feel it as a pure winter scent and it doesn't trigger any feelings of cosy Christmas markets in me. I even think it goes very well with heat, warm skin, dry air, hot sunbeams. In one way or another, the scent has something rough about it. I feel grounded and calm when I wear it.
On the evening I wore Méharées for the first time, before falling asleep, I read aptly in Achill Moser's breathtakingly beautiful book "Places of Longing":

The inhospitable, lonely landscapes of the desert, which trigger so many emotions - from intoxicating feelings of happiness to abysmal fear - were for me the place of longing par excellence right from the start.
Maybe every human carries one somewhere in his heart. We just have to go to find him.

Warm rays of sunlight fall on her face.
Pallas Athene wakes up, slowly opens her eyes and stretches her slender limbs. Today she is free, she decides, and hopes that she will not have to settle any quarrels. Maybe she'll weave a fine cloth in the afternoon, and she can relax so well. She no longer had to prove to anyone that she mastered this craft better than anyone else.

So she begins her day with a refreshing bath. She descends the hot stones to the bay, and lays down her light-coloured sleeping towel. Light waves surrounded her slender but trained body, the salty water wetted her skin, which was light bronze coloured by the sun. She rubs herself with a sponge she took from the sea. He reminds her of the fun bathing games with her favourite Pallas. If only her father had stayed out of the fight, which was only a game, they were so young and careless.
But the cool bath also refreshes her mind and lets her come back to clear and pleasant thoughts. She climbs up the rocks again and lets herself be dried by the warm morning sun. Even though Aphrodite is said to be the more beautiful, Athena knows the benefits of her beauty and has her own secret rituals. So she lets an alchemist mix a balm for her which is reserved only for her. The white milk of immature green figs is in it, and myrtle, the fresh herb plant to which it has a very special connection. The leaves of the fig tree, crushed in a stone mortar, are also added. She keeps this beauty balm in a jar made of fig tree wood, with which she cares for herself. He wraps her body in a scent that belongs only to her.
Wherever she goes, this fragrance blows around her, which inevitably reminds everyone who gets it in their nose of the beautiful fig trees. The bark of these trees bear the traces of Poseidon, whose salty winds and storms whipped past. But they defied this whim and grew all the more splendidly, and produced the most glorious fruits. Athena prefers to eat the ripe, juicy sweet figs pure. But the immature, still somewhat firm and milky, she loves them in her balm, there is nothing for them that could smell greener. And green is one of her favorite colors.
Most mortals so often think that the clothes of the gods and demigods and warriors and other personalities were white. Among them, however, are the archaeologists who used the wisdom that Athena gave to mortals. For many mortal sculptors worship marble more than the gods themselves, and were unable to paint it. And time makes colours fade, what was once painted is now white.
Athene therefore chooses a light olive green chiton for this dreamlike beautiful, quiet day. The color goes so well with her scent. This chiton is what mortals know as a tunic. Her model is made of airy woven cotton and Doric style, she closes it on her left shoulder with a simple bronze primer. She won't be putting on her armor today.
She steps out into her garden, whose trees provide shade. Your gaze wanders over the shimmering sea, golden dots reflect the warming sun.
She's breathing deep. It's gonna be a good day.

This is the first fragrance I've tested that leaves me completely confused.
And I almost bet I liked it...

It's the third Miller Harris I've been allowed to test. I found both Cassis en Feuille and Figue Amère very interesting and idiosyncratic, but I don't want to wear both.
I have the first positive impression because of the wonderful name, I think L'Air de Rien sounds dreamlike beautiful, and also the relation to Jane Birkin I find promising.
The scent is allowed on the wrist, and I expect something so fragile, transparent that I press my nose much too close to the skin. My first fragrance impression is that I can't smell anything out of it, let alone assign anything to it, except that it feels very skiny very quickly.
I don't have the scent pyramid in my head at first and look only later - I wonder about my so dear and familiar Neroli, no molecule of it makes it into my scent sensation, I search in vain.
I have an urgent impulse to wash dishes quickly. But I have a job to do and use the time until I get home to explore this scent, I want to know why it confuses me so much and I absolutely can't classify it.

As has already been mentioned here several times, the mouldyness comes to light very quickly with me too. No, it's not sweaty, and neither is powder or talcum. It is sweetish, but not synthetic or flowery-sweet, but a mature sweetness. It smells very physical. That's the only word I can think of.
Slowly, the scent reminds me of the little scented bags that older ladies often hang for decades in their wardrobes between pastel-coloured ensembles, flowery blouses with small golden buttons and fine cardigans. Lavender or rose. Only that the scented bags have not smelled of it for a long time, but with the fine silk ribbon they hang so nicely decoratively between the well-kept and well-kept clothes. Even a few mothballs, which haven't done their job for a long time, are behind the sweaters.
And yet L'Air de Rien by no means smells like grandma or old lady.

But I feel immature with the scent, as if I had not gained enough life experience to be able to do justice to this very adult perfume as a wearer. Through this physical in it, I must also think of a certain sexual maturity, of a self-confident handling of one's own body.
But the smell on my wrist also makes me feel somehow unshowered in my skin. I don't get a person in my mind who can imagine this scent. Then I remember Jane Birkin again, with her concise tooth gap, the casual erotic charisma, as she stands at Serge Gainsbourg's side self-confidently in crocheted mini dress and straw hat. No, it is the mature Jane who has suffered strokes of fate, the mother, the singer, who has lost nothing of her charisma.
I am satisfied with this association, and perhaps I understand the fragrance a little better now.
But now I really need to wash it off because I long for freshness.

I didn't know anything about myrrh until I landed on Parfumo. Except this tale of the three holy kings known as atheists. I didn't know what it smelled like, nor that I liked it.

I had assigned myrrh along with frankincense and patchouli to a fragrance category that generally seemed too dark and heavy to me. But since I've become more intensively involved with fragrances, I've learned to know and smell fragrances, and I've known that I've been guided by a picture I didn't know I had in my head
I had absolute cliché associations with Patchouli, I only knew incense from my grandmother's funeral - it had caused me nausea, and myrrh? I don't know, but it's definitely something that causes headaches.
ALL WRONG.
But I am inquisitive and curious, and always have the demand on myself, especially towards people, to go through the world without prejudices. Also in the world of fragrances I was taught and once again found out that one can only be rewarded with openness.
So this is about myrrh, and the first time I got in touch with it was through one of my new favorite fragrances, Battito D'Ali. I cannot perceive this fragrance in its individual components, but there is myrrh in it, and the overall composition is so wonderful for me that I became curious.
My Méharées shower gel also seems to contain myrrh, but it is not in the fragrance pyramid of the perfume. But I slowly get an idea of this fragrance.

That is why I am happy about the rehearsal of Saemm, thank you, love, and I am learning new things. I like myrrh.

Warmth. I couldn't describe Myrrhe Ardente any better with a word than this one.
A dry, resinous-sweet warmth. Immediately, fairy-tale images of a world I don't know rise up in me. I think of desert sand, dark and shady rooms, shimmering blurred images in the distance. I think of Thousand and One Nights, I have never read the book on my shelf and to my shame, and now it grips me and I want to lose myself in mysterious tales of a strange world.
In my head I create a mosaic of brown tones, shiny bronze, precious woods, dark mocha, dates, lumps of resin, brass, earth, clay, sand, and colors that only the sun can produce, and for which there are no names, because you can't hold on to these nuances, they are shimmering and in the next moment already gone again.

The fragrance begins sweetly, a tart sweetness, like syrup of walnut baklava. And there comes the balsamic and calm myrrh, which then briefly becomes smoky, and then spreads on the skin and remains there unperturbed for hours. Slightly waxy, like drops of wax on old, dark wood, but so in the background that I only smell it when I want to. There's a lot of rest here, and so much wanderlust. I hope that one day I will get to know all the wonderful places in the world that I dream of. That's why I love scents - they take me on the most beautiful journeys.

I like Etro.
Actually the clothes don't even fit my style, but I like the designs (from a designer's point of view), and also the image that Etro radiates has a charm to me. Noble, but not ostentatious, with a touch of the 70s - think of the famous paisley pattern!
And so on one of my rare side trips to a Karstadt I made a detour to the Etro shelf, where I tried my hand at it a bit with a nice saleswoman, she herself was new as she betrayed, and so we sniffed through some flacons.
Green fragrances belong to my favourite fragrances, and then Palais Jamais shone towards me, green in colour and promising. I liked him so much on the strip, I let him on the skin.
All day long I was accompanied by this almost bitter green, soft smoky scent. So I exchanged a specimen and could finally test again extensively.

On one of those rare days when I have a little job as an equipment assistant again. The shooting took place in a villa outside Hamburg, and my alarm clock rang at 5:30 to get there in time.
The day was going to be really warm, and I wanted to feel fresh and energetic, so I sprayed Palais Jamais on myself. I arrived at the villa and was shown around.
Through a garden gate, between two moss-covered stone figures, I reached an old, ivy-covered red brick villa. So many rooms and so many huge windows! The stairs led to two further floors. Also the garden was large (inviting), and ended with a fence and a view into a landscape that reminded me of a rococo picture, it was almost natural kitsch.
I spent the whole day there and found it very exciting, and at the same time I became particularly aware of where I came from. I had to share my room with my brother until I moved out at 18. We managed quite well to get out of the way and give ourselves room despite the skirmishes. There was never any money for holidays. Branded clothes were also almost never, except from the children's bazaar or second-hand. And I had the happiest childhood! I grew up lovingly, with little money, but with parents who spent time with us and always encouraged us to become what we want.
I will never live in a villa with 3 bathrooms, my own staff, and a garden so big that I couldn't decide where to have my breakfast.
But I don't want it either.
My palace is a completely different one, it exists in my dreams and accompanies me, it inspires and nourishes me. Sometimes it takes the form of a small house in the south, sometimes it is a studio flooded with light, and sometimes a garden that is a mosaic of countless shades of green.
This is one of the fragrances that take me to this very own palace of fantasy that can change its shape. He is a companion who does not transport me into another shell, but lets me be with him very much.

I find Palais Jamais to be deep green, slightly bitter and herbaceous. But it does not smell exclusively of herbs or grasses, the freshness of green lemons is added, the light tea note, which has already been mentioned here, I can also understand. And I smell the Petitgrain, and I like it very much because it simply smells like pure leaves.
I have observed the durability on the long shooting day; sprayed in the morning at 6.00 and noticeable until noon. Because I like the scent so much, I add a little more at noon, so that he spreads his present green cloud around me again.
My personal palace lies quite simply in a small, beautiful bottle.