Mahora and Mayotte by Guerlain really don't get much respect amongst perfumsitas…There is a theory that they are one and the same, but I assure you on my skin they are not.

 

 

I find both these fragrances sexy. Outlandishly sexy, erotic and bordering on the line of "louche". 

 

 

Lest you judge  the"world's oldest profession, in ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Mayan cultures, prositutes were 'priestesses', offering their body to the gods.

 

  

In contemplating  Mayotte and Mahora, the literary charachter Sadie Thompson,  the protaogonist of Rain, a short story by W.Somerset Maughaum (immortalized on stage and screen)immediately came to mind.

 

  

Sadie Thompson is a woman of questionable repute, living on a South Sea island trying to re-make her life. She arrives in Pago-Pago on the lam, but when the zealous missionary Mr. Davidson lashes out against her lifestyle and tries to force her back to San Francisco, she sees any hope of a second chance slip away.

 

The dour and unrelenting Mr. Davidson is on a mission to reform Sadie. She appears to give in and begins to pray and repent. Mr. Davidson spends several days alone with the ‘new’ Miss Thompson, cleansing her soul of sin.

 

In the end, Sadie is Sadie; she seduces the missionary and  Davidson subsequently commits suicide rather than face a suddenly uncertain future.  Immediately after his death, Sadie doesn’t miss a beat—laughing and chatting up the sailors and ‘returning’ to her raucous self. Sexy Sadie is  also smart Sadie.

 

“No, Doctor, moral standards can never be high enough. Especially here,  where all of nature seems to conspire against us. Everything grows with a sort of savage violence; today you will see strange flowers where yesterday there were only roots.” —Mr. Davidson, Rain

I chose both  Mahora and Mayotte for Sadie Thompson, not just because they are both tropical fragrances that smell of the South Pacific, but they strike ‘an accord’ regarding the “two Sadies”.

 

 

 Both fragrances pay homage to the island of Mayore, where the House of Guerlain has jasmine and ylang-ylang plantations. In an attempt to propose a new twist to the tropical Mahora, (which seems the perfume version) of the more subtle Mayotte, in 2006 Guerlain added Mayotte to its collection of re-editions called Les Parisiennes. It seems clear that it was a re-bottling of the poor selling Mahora issued in 2000.

There is a slight but noticeable differential on skin–from the very top note; Mahora starts out with a burst of orange and quickly turns into fruity, buttered tuberose. It strikes me as loud, aggressive and even mutinous. It’s sweet, and there is slickness to the tuberose note that seems defiant.

While Mahora is heady and pushy Mayotte is less shrill, and the ylang-ylang and frangipani notes seem more prominent. 

Let’s compare: Mahora features the notes of orange, almond tree blossoms, ylang-ylang, neroli, tuberose, jasmine, sandalwood, vetiver, and vanilla; the notes for Mayotte are neroli, frangipani, tuberose, ylang-ylang, jasmine, sandalwood, vetiver, and vanilla. The notes are the same, but they sing a different tune.

Mahora/Mayotte is the Janus of perfumery.

 

– Michelyn Camen, Editor-in-Chief