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At the time the Bodeguita del Centro probably wasn't even listed in the Lonely Planet guide - but I wouldn't have looked anyway, I wasn't there for touristic reasons alone. I have never been to Cuba, I only know the Caribbean from the Atlantic coast of (central) America, but it's all Latin America after all.

Lime, peppermint, and rum waft from a neighbouring table only to be drowned in a Coke. The wooden furniture creaks, someone lights a cigar (actually, at the time it could have been me), and what's that - a rose buttonhole? Shouldn't it be a carnation ... and do those even grow in the tropics?!

The band is applauded and eventually crowned with aromatic bay leaves.

The memory is sweet, the tonka more so. Actually for a moment it reminds me of 80s fougères and my grandfather who likes to wear those. Considering he liked to suck chocolate mint sweets when driving this is quite a strong image ... not a bad memory but I wouldn't want to smell so markedly manly ;-)

The base has some leather and tobacco and trails out as mostly cedarwood - if you need an image, pick pencils or new cedarwood chairs, either is fine for your holiday diary ;-)

Since I plunged into the adventure that scent is last year I'd been searching for Habanita. More precisely the I was pursuing the fascination of the perfect leather scent after finding a suggestion to look into that note in the Perfumeposse 101 posting. I tried lots of things from there ...

An excursion to the local drugstore with a list of scents purportedly projecting leather proved rather disappointing. The first perfume with unmistakable "leather" I loved was (don't laugh!) Histoires de Parfum's "1740 Marquis de Sade". The people at the niche perfumery in the city were quite helpful, too, and gave me lots of "leather" scents to test, too, but none quite convinced me. PG03 was nice but a bit too powdery (probably due to the coconut note since it doesn't officially contain benzoin). Besides, after a faux pas I didn't dare show my face for a while: who'd have thought that the K was silent? They did sell niche, but Niche 10? I had to get to the gentleman's store across the street for Kniže Ten, and while that is indeed, as someone wrote, a very stark leather, it was too dry for my taste - it works very well on imitation leather shoes but I don't care too much for it on my skin.

After those disappointments I wasn't in the mood for further experiments and ordered a sampler from one of the decanters - you know, with cowgirls getting the blues and everything, ... I loved most of those, meanwhile have decants of Daim Blond and Cuir Beluga, am still saving for organizing a sharing of Chanel's Cuir de Russie, ... and ignored Habanita. That is the bitter truth - at first i found it a trifle too sweet and only after another profumo member (thanks Thess!) had gifted me with another sample of it I finally fell for the soft flowery notes with the musky base. What an experience! I had to have more ... for those interested in sources, I found my bottle from a German amaz*n seller. Yesterday I got the black-and-grey box with the gold embossing and ... oak moss!!! An original?

To me, the scent itself is, as I might have mentioned two or three times, one of the most beautiful leather perfumes I know. The absence from the notes doesn't belittle that effect in the least - after all it is a spanish leather with Flowers, Herbs, and animalic ingredients. The head is sweet and resinous with a hint of petitgrain orange, soon reluctant flowers, a bit of patchouli and vetiver make an apperance. I can only reliably detect the musk after about an hour, bringing out the full leather bloom together with the sandalwood and honey.

Longevity doesn't appear excessive to me but 3 to 5 hours doesn't appear bad for an Edt. What remains is a bittersweet resinous amber with honey/beeswax.

And I don't even wear leather.

Rum, coumarines, labdanum, and tonka beans for some - for me this enchanting gourmand smells particularly of the plum dishes of my childhood - mushed, fried, with dumplings ...

One Austrian specialty, actually probably originally Hungarian, is Powidl - plums slowly cooked for many hours, according to some recipies up to a week, in an earthen pot, spreading a heavenly aroma of caramelised fruit. This is what I'm getting from Ambre Narguilé, together with a dash of the appropriate spices - cinnamon, a few cloves, cardamom and a whiff of wintery incense complete this wonderful Ambre.

To me, this is a holiday scent with the power to brighten the darkest of days.

Figs? Not at all. Comments mention fig branches and leaves, local perfumery Le Parfum stressed the, well, bitterness of this "fig note". With respect to her acclaimed "Fig" Mandy Aftel notes that she didn't find any fig essences and therefore made her own accord with a spectacurlar result - if you like her fir tar, which I do.

Conversely, in Figue Amère I smell a host of wonderful things - a head of incredibly fresh bitter splintering green woods and broken leaves that only stays a moment and opens to velvety-soft flowers, maybe a very slight hint of coconut that could be the result of a collective hallucination and a base that becomes even warmer and more powdery and mossy, keeping for many hours.

I like it a lot, but if you were looking for a ripe, fruity fig with no coconut and benzoin you had best make a trip to the nearest farmer's market.

I'll have to partially agree with ineverwas: it smells like dessert, maybe a very fruity pudding.

But I really shouldn't read others' comments before writing my own - that particularly goes for the German ones where the purported caviar note is interpreted as fishy, salty, like the sea and bad body odor ... could this be the same scent I was coaxed into purchasing 10 ml (0.3 oz) of at the local drugstore? In advance: I wouldn't wear it on many occasions but I certainly don't regret buying it. For one thing I like small original flasks (the teensy little spray bottle is even refillable!) and for another I only have one problem with this scent.

I'm biting my tongue because in a review about Miller Harris' "Figue Amère" I claimed that there were no "real" fig essences (Mandy Aftel wrote something to the effect about her Fig). Actually I can't find the note itself here, but Womanity opens to a grandiose fruit salad in my nose - lots of pears, grapes, maybe some pineapple with little to no hesperidic accords.

As long as this fruit basket remains I'm singing praises for Womanity - what's in a name? I'm the first in favor of blurring the gender gap anyway, I'm even coming to terms with Chanel's No 5.

Vetiver? Cedar? Salt? The caviar must be hiding pretty well, when I want a sea beeze I'll take Hermès' Eau de Merveilles any time.

Unfortunately sometimes this fruity combination sometimes gives way to a milk-and-honeyy coconut aroma reminiscent of cheap shower gels that doesn't go well with either my skin or my nose. I love honey in some combinations (thus being the worst vegan ever), but milk and coconut just aren't my thing, so when that happened I got the urge to wash and scrape the scent off my skin. However, that hasn't happened recently, maybe for me this is a winter scent?

The only thing currently keeping me from using Womanity more often is my significant other whom it reminds of a bronzed and platinum blonde friend, and not in a good way.