Parfümlein

What a beautiful summer's day! I get up early and step out onto the street before eight to bathe in the bright, clear light that only exists in Italy. The smell of fresh espresso fills my nose, the bars have just opened, elegant men in suits stand at the bar and enjoy their caffè standing up. I let myself be carried away by the scents, walk along the shady cobblestones, stop in front of the beautiful stores and am magically drawn to the cathedral, which is already so crowded in the early morning. I just want to look at it from the outside and head for an ice cream parlor, and because the sun is not yet at its zenith, it doesn't have to be lemon ice cream. I choose the wonderful Amarena cherry ice cream. Juicy, almondy-tasting, dark, almost black cherries, finely candied and yielding to my bite with a soft crunch, are on top - a delight of sweetness, cherry aroma, almond flavor and a divine consistency, crunchy and then soft and syrupy. The wonderful flavor is infused into the yogurt ice cream, which encases more small pieces of this Italian cherry specialty. I savor every lick. I am in Italy! In Florence! The sun is shining! I'm enjoying a fantastic ice cream in front of the cathedral!
What other gifts could life have in store?
All of this is Vicebomb.
A sprayer. And the whole flood of associations washes over me. This wonderful summer, this delicious ice cream.
Vicebomb is by no means an autumn or winter cherry fragrance. It has nothing of Lost Cherry or Lovefest Burning. You only think that in the first few seconds, perhaps because you expect it, because you want to categorize the fragrance in familiar cherry scents.
Take your time to really get to know this fragrance. What does it really smell like?
It is not the cinnamony or marzipan-heavy sour cherry of the familiar fragrances of this type.
It is the true Amarena cherry, sweet and unresisting, creamy and bright. A very different cherry fragrance, exceptional, for bright days. An Italian interpretation of cherry pleasure, not wintery and deep, but summery and light.
Simply beautiful!

Currants and roses! I can hardly think of a combination that is more summery than this - provided you imagine a Central European summer, in Germany or, as in my case, in Austria. A garden, infinitely large for an eight-year-old, with constantly new secrets, hidden corners, hidden passages, with trees so huge that there is enough shade underneath to bear the July heat, with daisies, with a white picket fence that suggests safety and protection, boundaries within which you can completely indulge in the ever new discoveries, the many different flowers, the small insects and the whole, full summer pleasure. And in front of this fence: currant bushes, gigantic, with plump red berries, and in between, fully blossomed roses that have not yet succumbed to the heat, because this childhood dream tells of days long gone. Snacking on the rather sour berries, the pleasure of brushing them off the panicles, sticking your nose in a cool, velvety-soft rose... and then lying completely relaxed on the checkered blanket in the middle of the grass, the large piece of sweet watermelon, biting into the middle of the crescent-shaped slice with relish, the buzzing of bees, the fluttering of lemon butterflies... what a paradise, a garden day in midsummer in the Vienna Woods.
I like to think back to that time, and I always do when I wear Izia la Nuit. I'm immediately back in my mother's friend's garden, enjoying those long, bright days full of leisure and lightness. Izia La Nuit makes it easy for me: the juicy, fruity blackcurrant at the beginning, which allows the full, dark rose to shimmer through after a few minutes, from then on dancing a round dance together with it in perfect harmony, immediately makes me think of the scent of that garden, in which blackcurrants and roses alternated. A wonderful perfume that presents an extraordinarily beautiful composition. What I particularly like is that the autumnal notes of labdanum and patchouli, which gently come through after a while, take away the purely fruity sweetness of the fragrance and ground it in the truest sense of the word, making it mature. For me, it is very pleasing that patchouli is not too strong, not used too characteristically, which is often too much for me. Here, it is wonderfully subtly interwoven, but clearly distinguishes the fragrance from a gourmand. Overall, an incredibly beautiful, cheerful, full and elegant fragrance that I don't necessarily associate with the night, but wouldn't really classify as summer either, the earthy notes prevent that. It's the perfect fall fragrance that evokes the sweetness of summer once again, but also doesn't hide the fact that everything beautiful is fleeting, that the bright days are ending and the time of harvest is beginning. Pantha rei - perfectly embodied in Izia La Nuit.

... can be quite helpful! At least that's what I discovered when I enriched my personal Parfumo series with a repeat of the "Angel's Share" episode and the "Khamrah" episode, which had been removed from the program...
I was very fascinated by the bottle and the notes of Angel's Share shortly after it was released - and by the fragrance too. So soft, so round, so elegantly alcoholic... Unfortunately, I got tired of the fragrance shortly afterwards. And sold it again. So far, so good.
On one of these days, when I was tired of making decisions - decision fatigue, I read, is a symptom of my job, in which I make up to 1,500 decisions a day - and lolling listlessly in front of YouTube, I saw a video in which Angel's Share was very much slated. Because I think so little of the source of this channel, this video almost challenged me: "Bad? Okay. I'll watch it again."
Unfortunately, I found Angel's Share quite expensive. And THAT was the moment when Khamrah appeared on the scene. Enthusiasm! Great bottle! Great pyramid! Great comments! And a wonderful prize!
Khamra quickly moved in with me and I thought I now had my Angel's Share back. But unfortunately that wasn't the case. I was so bitterly disappointed. Khamrah is, as many write here, really a fragrance in its own right. But I don't think it needs to hide behind Angel's Share. I don't get on well with it. I do perceive the subtle spicy tones, but there is something so harsh, dull and dark in the background that I find it rather unpleasant to wear after a short time. I don't find this harshness masculine at all, that's not the problem. It's just that I find the fragrance relatively flat, it doesn't go into depth, doesn't spread out in developments, doesn't lead along winding paths to drydowns that surprise, but remains very linear and very intense in my eyes, and that builds up in front of me like a wall that is simply too powerful for me. In my opinion, the fragrance lacks the softness that makes it possible to wear spice fragrances at all. I don't eat cooking spices on their own, a teaspoon of cinnamon or even nutmeg would be extremely unpleasant (and probably also very unhealthy). For me, spices need to be integrated into a soft, restrained base, to which they add the finishing touch like diamonds to an elegant, simple dress. They have to make the base sparkle, and they must not appear pure. One idea I like about Khamrah is the smell of warm apples with a slight acidity, such as Boskoop, associations with warm apple pie. But in Khamrah, this note overwhelms me, as if the apples were not embedded in soft, tender, buttery shortcrust pastry, but in fresh concrete. Khamrah is therefore not the right fragrance for me. And so, in the end, my path led me back to Angel's Share, which I won't give away again and won't share with any angels.

That the Sabaeans were considered a rich people is not surprising: they traded in frankincense and myrrh; precious items worthy of a king, as the story of the newborn king in Bethlehem shows. Frankincense and myrrh, dissolved in oil, are in fact the most valuable substances of antiquity. Those who mastered the frankincense trade - and the Sabaeans succeeded in this great coup in the 7th century B.C. - could no longer complain about financial worries. The Sabaeans are based in what is now Yemen, and for thirty years archaeologists have been digging there for a palace that will prove not only the wealth of the Arab people but also their legendary queen: Malkat Šĕva in Hebrew, Makeda in Ethiopian, Bilkîs or Balkîs (which is again Hebrew) in Islamic tradition.

Balkîs is an extraordinary woman. So little is known about her - and yet she appears in so many writings: the Old Testament, the Qur'an, and Ethiopian legends. What is puzzling about her is that almost nowhere does she become identifiable by a name - only the Ethiopian scriptures refer to her specifically as "Makeda." All other names - and many have been attributed to her - are traditionally used, but are hardly historically verifiable, as is her never-found palace.
Her meeting with the famous King Solomon is also enigmatic: she comes to him with precious gifts, she asks him questions, complicated, treacherous riddles. And yet, if she really did meet him, she was not the Queen of Sheba. For the kingdom of Sheba did not exist, or at least: did not flourish, until two centuries after Solomon.

Now at first this is not surprising. Mixing historical figures, combining them, linking their deeds and thus providing them with a new chronology is a pattern we already know from the Nibelungenlied; it served the mostly oral memory of our ancestors to bring extraordinary characters and central human conflicts into a logical context and thus to preserve them in order to recognize behavioral patterns, conflict solutions, human failures and to transmit them to later generations. As little as Attila, Brunhild and Siegfried could have known each other, so little did Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. It is interesting, then, to see what stereotyped behaviors, what faults, what conspicuousness their fictional meeting was intended to illuminate.

Solomon is not only wise on his throne of ivory. And filthy rich. He is, above all, a womanizer. He is said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines - this sheds significant light on Balkîs, the eponym of our perfume. She must have been beautiful, extraordinarily beautiful, beguilingly beautiful - and also very, very rich. It is to his court that she goes in the story of the Old Testament, in the First Book of Kings, to convince herself that Solomon is really the one whose picture is drawn in the tales. To do him the honor he deserves with her state visit, she brings gifts: Precious stones, gold and the precious balsamic oils of frankincense and myrrh. He did not need these gifts, for it is said in the First Book of Kings that his tableware was made entirely of gold. However, he was probably attracted by the beauty of her gift, and so he agreed to answer the questions that the queen asked him in order to test his intelligence. The question about water, which comes neither from heaven nor from earth and yet is able to quench every thirst, has been handed down from Islam. Correctly Solomon recognizes: it is the sweet sweat of the horse. He passes the test this intelligent woman puts him to. The lesson, then, is probably that two equals in rank and name, in money and property, cannot value each other until the spirit of the one inspires the other.

However, if Balkîs, the Queen of Sheba, is not the biblical woman whom Solomon met, then who was she? She was then probably queen, but not of Sheba; here then the Bible erred as it so often does. All roads to establish the identity of Solomon's intriguing visitor lead to Ethiopia: to Makeda, the fabled black queen. She may have known Solomon - Flavius Josephus, the Roman historian, can at least tell us that Solomon received an Ethiopian queen. She, too, was presumably wealthy. And probably very beautiful, too.

Makeda, Balkîs meets us as an enigma. As an enigmatic woman who fascinated equally the Hebrew, the Ethiopian and the Islamic cultures. When Céline Ellena characterizes her as "sublime," she hits on the impression that the Queen of Sheba creates in European, Oriental, and even American culture, which tried its hand at a big-screen epic with Gina Lollobrigida: she doesn't let anyone see her cards. She does not allow herself to be equated with other women. She doesn't let herself be dominated. She emancipates herself from the man's monopoly on power and intelligence and opposes him as his equal. At the same time, she makes use of the weapons that man does not have, and also uses her beauty sublimely: Double is better.

"Sublime Balkiss | The Different Company" is a fragrance that perfectly encapsulates this female character: it is utterly enigmatic. I don't know of a second scent that I find so difficult to categorize, and the countless, completely different statements prove this. It's a fragrance that starts out oddly round, velvety and fruity. The strange, the alien, lies in the violet leaf, which opens a dark depth whose hidden reason can only be guessed at. Present is the currant, but it is so interwoven with the individual flowers and these are so difficult to separate from each other that a fresh, minimally fruity, slightly green, tart scent emerges that is literally "niche". It doesn't compare to any other perfume I know, and it's obviously polarizing. You love it or you despise it - but do you even understand it? Isn't it much more mysterious than it seems at first glance? Feminine it is, and strong at the same time, with a convincing sillage and a fairly long longevity of about four hours. Although there are florals and fruit and even cocoa involved, it never courts foreign favors or uses sophisticated feminine tricks: it's not sexy. But mysterious. Not sweet. But feminine. Not flowery. But in depth, he's hiding something. It's confident. And the patchouli I so disliked gives its tart green note an earthiness that couldn't be more harmonious. It's a queen scent. If the Queen of Sheba aka Ethiopia, the enigmatic Balkîs, hadn't intrigued Solomon with this fragrance - she wouldn't have made it with any. Perhaps he dedicated these words from his Song of Songs to the beautiful Ethiopian and her balsamic-scented gifts:

"How beautiful is your love, / my sister bride; how much sweeter is your love than wine, / the fragrance of your ointments more delicious than all the perfumes of balm." (Hld 4:10)

... is dancing with me... cheek to cheek...

Only real kids of the 80s still know this schmonzette by Chris deBurgh.
I'm one of them - and remember this song being the reason I desperately wanted a red evening gown for my bronze dance class graduation. It seemed like the kingdom of heaven to me, the incarnation of the beautiful, the wonderful, the romantic. That song alone had inspired me to think that only in a red, soft-flowing dress could I glide elf-like across the dance floor. My dance partner - a wonderfully kind man whose right leg was actually shorter than his left and who, moreover, had an impossibly slanted silver gaze - was certainly not the incarnation of the beautiful. But he was affectionate and elegant in the dance, and led me through all the classes with the greatest pleasure. This, in turn, to the delight of my beautiful, always freestyle dancing, true "friend" with whom I "walked".

Dancing school - a term that nowadays seems to be known only to the initiated, and only a few youngsters are still captivated by it. Every now and then I come across such specimens who consider it relevant to be able to move adequately swinging at future balls, and therefore frequent the now only dance school in town - they seem to have become the exception. A real shame. After all, what could be better than setting off around two o'clock on a Saturday after surviving the dreary school week, laughing and giggling your way around among like-minded people, and setting off for a wild party afterwards? I feel lucky that I got to experience that time in all its intensity - except I never got the red dress. My mother just wasn't playing along. THAT was definitely not what she envisioned for a 16 year old. And she was in charge.

I think of the red dress I never got when I use "Déclaration Love - Tyrannique | Jacques Zolty." I turn the beautiful, deep red bottle in my hand, like I used to sway to rum music years ago, and immerse myself in this paradise of florals. "Déclaration Love - Tyrannique | Jacques Zolty" is one of the most beautiful tuberose fragrances I know - because it is so much more than just tuberose. At first spray, however, it is there, completely present, soft and creamy, bringing back memories of endless tuberose scents the nose has been allowed to sniff so far. Unlike all those other scents, however, the tuberose here seems only to awaken the memory. But it does not fight blindly that dominance, which is suitable for other tuberose fragrances.

"Déclaration Love - Tyrannique | Jacques Zolty" works like this: A spray on the décolleté - and you dive into the paradisiacal beautiful world of tuberose. Another spray on the wrist, wait a few seconds, and the tuberose gives way to other impressions: soft, warm honey, which is sweet and delicate, probably thanks to the orange blossom. This honey-sweet, but at the same time discreet, not intrusive, really fine cream scent immediately lets in the lilac, which audibly knocks on the door - and the paradisiacal feelings suddenly become more tangible: no soft-flowered South Sea island is the place of this paradise, but a bright, sunny spring day with a delightful lilac breeze.
Perhaps that is the greatest achievement of this dreamlike fragrance: the courage to combine tuberose and lilac, to give these two solitaires a common polish and thereby unite them in the most beautiful harmony. The joint dance of lilac and tuberose makes the fragrance soft, swaying, creamy. It is the art of balance that has been perfected here. No chewy notes, no pungent South Seas sultriness, no dripping sweetness - but floral creaminess where each of the two beauties keeps the other in check. Add to that the slightly tangy opening - where neither neroli nor orange are really perceptible, providing more of an ethereal lightness to counterbalance the opening tuberose - and add to that the lovely, after-hours vanilla finish, and this fragrance really does evoke a perfect image of youthful promise: Dreams, longings, romance - but still unlived, awaiting fulfillment in the realm of possibility, and so long embraced by spring-fine girlishness. I wouldn't say that the fragrance is suitable for a 16-year-old in dance class. It's probably a little too intense, too grown up for that. But it conjures up the image of a 16 year old dreaming of great love, just experimenting with springtime feelings, being in the springtime of her life herself. "Déclaration Love - Tyrannique | Jacques Zolty" is in this respect a fragrance for adults who remember their youth and in whose memory the past - the lightness of spring - and the present - the heaviness of love - unite in a beautiful dance. It is, summa summarum, a sentimental fragrance. Those who like tuberose should try this fragrance - its gentle creaminess is simply beautiful.

I did get a red dress years later. I was strolling through Luxembourg's city centre with my best friend in the depths of winter. It was snowing, I was pregnant, it was cold. At Laura Ashley we discovered the dress: a deep red like the bottle of "Déclaration Love - Tyrannique | Jacques Zolty", heavy flowing velvet, waterfall neckline. That was it and we both bought it. I wore it to a wedding in Puglia. A few weeks ago, I sold it on ebay. But for many years it embodied my young girl dreams, even if it was just hanging unused in the closet. I was finally able to let it go now, a few weeks ago. For the memory of those dreams, I now have "Déclaration Love - Tyrannique | Jacques Zolty."