Federduft

"Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden?" Eleanor at Kew Gardens from Virginia Woolf

He makes me strangely melancholy.
Strange, because there is no melancholic undertone in the notes or in the composition of this fragrance. Jamaican lime, Scottish highland pine, English rose. Canadian cedar, Australian eucalyptus and orange(s) from the Bahamas.
Well, maybe melancholy, the melancholy of a past epoch and a faded empire with it...
Almost isolated, I perceive the scents at the beginning. Almost overripe lime, the mild fruit resin of juniper berries. The duality of camphor sharpness and herbal sweet balsams of fresh pine juice. Cool rose, thawed. Tuberose1) in camouflage mode, which dazzles me with its mimesis of honeysuckle and wilted lily of the valley and lures me away from the heart of the rose.
Warm, discreet cedar wood and a eucalyptus playing a joke on me, sometimes flirting florally with tuberose, sometimes bleaching teeth with chlorine2). In between surprisingly, intimate musk.
No, this is not the scented image of the sketch of Royal Mayfair that I in my usual naivety threw down
No forest, no pine grove. No wild and romantic landscape, no untamed nature. And yet it lets me inhale more deeply, as if I stepped out of a smog-contaminated metropolis into an old park.
This breath balances my viewpoint.
Expands it, from that of the ant following pheromone tracks in the teeming crowd, to the central perspective of the flâneur in this venerable garden.
It is the string of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew that the fragrance strikes in my memory. Here, in this 'oasis
in the desert of Greater London made of brick and mortar' 3) In this man-made piece of nature, you can breathe a sigh of relief with all your senses. Ancient Lebanon 4) cedars can be found here, familiar and unknown trees in great variety. There are representatives of the pine from all continents. In one of the beautiful, temple-like greenhouses made of white lacquered iron and sparkling glass, an impressive eucalyptus tree thrives and if you are lucky, it blooms in the area of the dry tropical Agave polianthes next to Humboldt lilies.
Countless plants and picturesque arrangements can be admired and perhaps even the one dedicated to the Duke of Widsor 5), which is offered as a reference for the English Rose in Royal Mayfair, is still in bloom in the Rose Garden.
Enough of the dawdling in the autumnal garden of my memory and back to the presence of the fragrance.
It needs further detailed examination until I finally succeed in changing the perspective and I can insert the fragments into an elegant painting.
Juniper, pine and lime fuse together to create a surprisingly pleasant tonic water with dry, herbal gin. Mossily medicinal and to my delight only reflecting the ethereal top notes of the drink. 6)
The cedar carries on a slim but solid trunk an aromatic crown after lovingly tended, sparingly but exquisitely occupied humidor.
But what I feel in my heart is the same floral pulsating of Royal Mayfair. Here I am surrounded by the unique, intimate perfume of a kiss on the cheek of a man who is intimately familiar with the weather and smells of rose soap.
In addition, like a gurgling, glittering stream of water, the eucalyptus meanders through the entire picture and connects the different levels, setting a metallic accent here with tuberose, reminiscent of remnants of smog (after all, we are still in the city), contributing to a transparent expanse with pine and wetting the earth at the roots of the cedar.
The top notes are a sparkling, albeit very much like the drink that inspired them, a short-lived pleasure, although elements throughout the fragrance flash up again and contribute to the clear, cool impression. The heart, to my delight, is perseveringly perceptible, regardless of whether on skin, feather or textile, the base is very close to the skin remains impressively long as a touch of "cedar wood wardrobe" on fabric.
Royal Mayfair is not a fragrance for a forest goblin (generic masculine) but neither is it exclusive to the Gentry (generic feminine).
Elegant, but gets along perfectly without urban chic. Subtle, but with a tangible presence. Not sexy at all, just immediately sensual. To wear as you please.
However, it is a fragrance that I would rather enjoy on a person intimately familiar to me than wearing it myself.

* Trigger warning: No comment containing information relevant to purchase or test divorce, only my impression plus *earworm for Norleans
1) This may also be due to the simultaneous, so far rather fruitless preoccupation with another, very tuberose-emphasized scent
2) checked again: I also find this chlorine-like note like in a Eucalcyptus globulus oil in my fundus
3)A. R. Hope Moncrieff, Kew Gardens
4) surely you will find a few canadian specimens by searching carefully...
5) ironically, this is a tea hybrid that was bred in Germany
6) Alcoholics are among my opponents of fear.

It's cool and gloomy today. A still undecided October morning that, when the haze turns into high fog, can also unfold into one of those bright late autumn days.
Most of the bushes and trees have already got rid of their copper and amber color and the shabby foliage covers the meadow with a brown-spread patchwork carpet.
From the window of my (witch) kitchen in the deep priory I have a wonderful view from the mole's perspective into our garden.
I wear Encre Noir and watch the smart black (Corvus corone) and black and white (Pica pica) hiding and eating a ration of peanuts. Too few years ago I decided to treat these birds not as mere nest robbers and troublemakers, but as the other songbirds in our garden.
They are no longer driven away, can help themselves to the feedlots and feast on plums and apples. There are nuts for them, surplus (or even extra) boiled eggs and occasionally a chicken collar and tails.
My way of looking at things has changed and I have discovered beautiful, fascinating creatures. "Now she is talking about her birds again, well, if she isn't a tit" some people will think, not without reason.
I wear Encre Noir
The fragrances are monothematic.
Cypress, vetiver, cashmere.
Smoky, dark, black.
The plumage of a raven crow is monochrome.
Without recognizable drawing, even by the more inclined observer at best titled as bourgeois tailcoat.
Dull, dark, black.
If you give the seemingly dark fellows just a little bit more than casual attention this can be very enlightening.
An unexpected ray of sunshine makes the feathers, which were just dull, with accents in deep violet and shiny green-gold, change into the blue of Damascus steel.
Black painting in the most iridescent colours. *
This perfume scatters all these refractions and spreads out before me like iridescent black wings.
The eau de toilette was tested on my skin, my long-suffering favourite sweater, and stylistically on a crow's feather (a moulting feather from a free-living bird, of course). On my skin, the fragrance developed most quickly and short-lived, with the smoky tones being the main ones. On fabric the durability was much better and the earthy, patchouli-like components dominated. On the feather, the citrus and resin reflexes were brilliant, and the overall progression was more moderate and persistent. No hooked course of development, more
the even up and down of large wings. I find it fascinating how dazzling it looks despite its dark base. Encre Noir is a fragrance which, just like crows, polarises. The beauty lies, as always, in the eye (or nose) of the beholder.
To the sex assignment: Also raven ladies carry black!





* a book by Johanna Romberg
* here speaks probably the chimera of Cashmeran to me
* comment without meaningful, to a test or purchase decision leading, fragrance description

If you are wondering what the Pina Colada Song (I'm sure most of you know it,
at least since Guardians of the Galaxy ; ) ) has to do with Bottega Veneta pour Homme: Nothing.
Except for the fact that men and women often like the same things, but do not exchange ideas about them, and so in mutual ignorance about it, miss a wonderful opportunity.
What does this have to do with Bottega Veneta pour Homme? Per se, nothing.
Bottega Veneta pur Homme was one of those fragrances that I specifically looked for the
I picked out essences. A heavy Labdanum fetish dominated my desires at the time
and also the other fragrances listed have a fixed place on my list
of favorite stimulants. (Fir balm latest since the starry night of Annick Goutal, which Bottega Veneta reminds me of at times). The classification under woody-fresh only increased my desire - one of my incarnations must have been a life spent as a woodworm. (Wooden scent in many different forms: Wood shavings, bark mulch, that smoky aroma when wood is slept on... etc,etc,etc makes my nostrils quiver with interest... ). Now the experienced perfumers among you will say "a perfume is always more than the sum of its parts" and "pyramids of scents are not everything", and you might as well just put the bottles of essential oils under your nose. Right. I would never dare to talk back. And yet there are these, let's call it fetish nuances, by which one is attracted again and again. And more combination variations of these than a pine tree has needles. What does this have to do with Bottega Veneta pour Homme? Not much - except that for me the intersection of the individual notes results in a wonderful Dufkino. I perceive it as a pronounced "head-free fragrance" as a fragrance to breathe and let go. A fragrance like the still snow-cold wind blowing outwards (author's note: outwards the last phase of winter or the early phase of early spring) that whistles from my home mountains.
A smell that gives me a similar feeling as standing under one of those centuries old tree cathedrals that still exist in our jungle area. The head placed in the neck and still not grasping the true size. Furthermore, like the Labdanum, I like exactly this
"burnt wood dust" mark on my skin. I like the herbaceous edge and at the same time velvety texture of the Muscatel ointment (which by the way is growing wildly in my garden and is very familiar and appreciated), the ambivalence of the pimento with its four-note harmony of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper. I like the resinous, ethereal freshness of pine and fir balm, the near sacred juniper. I like the fact that Bottega Venetta is not what you would call a wummser and yet he has just enough stamina to still feel the balsamic qualities of him on my arm when I fall asleep. In short: I like the individual parts of this fragrance as well as all the associations it evokes in its entirety.
If you like... If you also like these things, then you will love this fragrance too.
And if I was interested in gender signs in fragrances, I would have missed this wonderful opportunity.
Glad we talked about it

Shoveling snow in the morning and the grey dirty weather of the day, there was a longing for more colourful, sunny beaches in the evening.
Morocco is for me a wanderlust synoym of similar quality as Janosch's Panama. The travel guide for this comes from the Demeter Libray of Fragance: Morocco from the Destination Collection -
The fragrance had been tested a few times, worn sporadically as "sleep scent". In memory, it was placed on the shelf somewhere between the epic dahlia of Jesus del Pozo, the elegant edition of Meharees, quotes from Feminite du bois and Bois Marocain for dummies, with the note "mostly harmless" and ignored for a long time.
And then ignorance slammed a floral fist up my nose. Not at all according to my expected scent.
No stroll through a painted souk with spices offered for sale in open baskets. No sweet-and-hot mint tea. Not even the slightest breath of dry Saharan air. But a real buzz of stunned, toxic-tropical flowers. Proliferating and waxy, oily greasy shiny.
I did not pay enough attention to the tour guide and the day trip did not lead to the Djemaa el Fna, but to the 'Valley of Roses'. Only roses are not, so baroque, even brute-force sometimes they appear. Present, accompanied by a sweet jasmine, almost shy in contrast to his other kind, no more than a footnote. Neroli, a note scribbled in the margin
I was stinky, playing Hercule Poirot, without his famous nose
The grey cells, which are small for scent recognition, seemed to be anaesthetised. Lilies are not, too little pollen. Cloves, contrary to the first association, more in their spice form.
Spices, yes. A fine powder, very sweet. No racy cinnamon, no invigorating priest. Sweet, cardamom, aniseed. Or the triad of Piement?
The perfume encyclopedia was consulted, and under the heading of fragrances I read: spices. It's great. And in between, the little Belgian detective had his appearance on my mental stage, smoothing a more imaginary, resistive hair in his brilliant shiny hairstyle.
The evening continued without enlightenment. Sleep, as long as I could not attribute this fragrance to any botanical source, unlikely, besides Morocco - for a cologne published by Demeter - proved to be surprisingly persistent. Another source was the website of Demeter and what did I find there? Spices. "Freshly ground Moroccan spices in a thousand-year-old open-air market." Enlightening. And exactly what I had originally expected . Not a word about the floral component I was looking for. As a further inspiration they mentioned a song by Crosby, Stills & Nash. Marrakesh Express. I don't know it now. With nimble fingers I looked for the lyrics (the song itself is not really mine, by the way) and what did it say: "I smell the garden in your hair"
Hair! Hair! Hair oil! Strong smelling hair oil! Makassar! An ancient hair cosmetic traditionally perfumed with Ylang-Ylang! Ylang-Ylang! Imagine all the exclamation points simply as little light bulbs that finally lit up. The dear soul finally had her peace and
decided the next morning to verify the scent of Ylang-Ylang again on the existing bottle of essential oil. This trace proved to be the solution to the mystery. Well, my trip to Morocco did not go as planned, but it was exciting and instructive for me.
Sometimes it is not so easy to get to the bottom of fragrances without a list of components or directions. Sometimes you expect one thing and find something completely unexpected. But isn't this the exciting thing about olfactory road trips?
Morocco is a very floral, almost floriental fragrance, a hint of fine spices resonates.
This is how I imagine it was in the 30s of the last century in Casablanca, sitting at the Babier, hearing the noisy hustle and bustle of the market from outside, the flowing robes of the Halaq
exude a delicate scent of cardamom and piement. And Hercule winks conspiratorially at you with macassar-soaked hair in the spotted mirror.

Norleans pet blog encouraged me to wear Thyme Rouge from Panier de Sens once again. This scent was acquired when I was looking for thyme-laden perfumes, inspired by the discovery that our budgies love thyme more than they love to eat. I cherished the esoteric hope that some of your enthusiasm for the herb might rub off on me. So naturally, red thyme sounded good
Red is the thread that runs through this fragrance. Deep, playing into the purple, like not yet overripe red gooseberries. Red gooseberries, harvested in the midday heat, together with small leaves and stems, before they fall victim to the sun's heat or the blackbirds.
This impression is so bitter-fruity and somewhat sticky that I would like to lick my fingers to clean them from the juice of the berries that have already become a little soft. Red, like spots of the juice of the last currants on my apron, which I threw into the bowl while I was at it.
The scent of sunny fruits becomes cooler. I left the hot garden with the mostly withered peonies and sat in the kitchen in the deep priory, which was pleasantly dim in summer.
The harvest is cleaned, free of leaves and stalks, ready to be made into jam.
The thyme creeps in as an afterthought. Because to my chagrin (my budgies don't care - they prefer the real herb that can be gnawed on properly) he is nothing more than that. A herbaceous-woody hint to the idea of adding a pinch of dried thyme to gooseberry jam, thus softening the fruit drop impression and accentuating the tart nature of the berries a little more.
Thyme Rouge is a completely natural-looking fragrance - tart, refreshing and fruity, unobtrusive and easy to wear.
More red berries than the thyme that gives it its name, yet appetizing.
More cologne than perfume, but sparkling.
Also, this year, unless the blackbirds had the beak in front, I will add a few leaves of thyme to my gooseberry jam, I have a feeling it will be delicious.