Smartopal

Sitting on a quay wall, a small fishing village, the Atlantic coast of France.
The sun is shining, the wind is blowing gently, the sea is crashing in gently bobbing waves against the stone wall below my dangling bare feet. Am a child again.
Sea breeze, salty aerosols wet my skin.
It smells of the sea, of shells, rock and seaweed.
I take a deep breath, stretch my face into the sun, take a walk.
Forget time, no burden, no confinement. Life is beautiful, freedom free.
"Sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time" (Otis Redding)

Warm, sensual and incomparably beguiling, this fantastic fragrance drew me under its spell.
As a high school graduate, I worked in a perfumery during the Christmas holidays.
Samples and miniatures were freely available to us.
There was a proper stocking up and sniffing for all it was worth.

Then came Lancaster!

Never before and never after did a fragrance get under my skin like that. We became one.
For 15 almost 20 years, it was my fragrance, my ever-surrounding identifying mark,
my great love. There were some other beautiful waters, which came in between to use, but Lancaster was my one and everything, undisputed number 1.

Today I still love it very much, but I don't want to wear it anymore.
It reminds me of my youthful Sturm-und Drang time, which is long gone,
Wistfulness spreads.
He stands well guarded in my wardrobe and remains there as a dear friend.
I hold him in honor.

My first souk sweetie!
Outright gourmands are not my specialty and have been largely avoided. Fruit overkill and sugar shock were to be feared.
However, this delicious vanilla dream has now done it to me. Soft, gentle and delicately sweet, rounded off by subtle wildflower and musk notes, comfortingly warm, it will envelop me comfortingly on these cold grey winter days and evenings. An absolute winter scent.
A cloud of "All is well!" and the evil world can stay outside, wonderful!

In the early 90s, I came across Kouros. In the student commune of my then boyfriend, the fragrance made the rounds.
From then on, my nose was stapled to his neck, whenever that was wetted with this seductive attractant. If I may avail myself of Toytiger's lovely image of the "stinking ocelot enclosure," Kourus turned quite a few of us young women into cats in heat.
Incomparably animalistic, coarse, strong and irresistible.

No idea if today's texture is still the same. Kouros is for me a fragrance of its time and forever associated with youth, masculine strength and vitality.

With the first breath with "Oxygène" in front of my nose, my facial features derail briefly. I feel unpleasantly reminded of salad, which was accidentally overlooked in the vegetable drawer for days, and is now going on its way. This first shock subsides quickly, the gardenia starts to pierce and hardly makes it any better. How can this be? Such a promisingly fresh looking blue wet!? Bergamot, rose and musk, my darlings...? I'm going to keep on sniffing and after a while I dare to try again. A gentle hint of freshness, paired with a lovely, almost sweet cloud of milk and blossom have developed. "Aquatic" I search in vain. Pleasant and conciliatory, however, this fragrance falls short of my expectations