CaFleureBon will be one of the participating sites that will explore The Mystery of Musk, a ‘scentual’ internet project put together by Anya McCoy, president of The Natural Perfumer’s Guild in celebration of NPG’s 4th birthday
Perfume is an Art. Some people may not think of it quite this way, but it the 8th Art…Sensual art. It is the art that comes to the senses through the beauty of nature and nature’s gifts. This is the essential lesson. Like a beautiful piece of music, it can speak to us of the future or of days gone by. If it is fortunate enough, the fragrance will evoke the same feelings in the future as it did when first you used it, and like a fine wine or musical piece, it can bring you back over and over for more.
This is why I look forward to every new release by Mme. Micallef eagerly because when she finds these serendipitous combinations these fragrances are wonderful. In her two latest releases she has done this for incense in Shanaan and lily of the valley in Lucky Charm.
“But— Niche’s growth is so explosive there is danger here too. If a niche fragrance is not singular and different; if it tries to pass off expensive hard to find perfume as fine fragrance, it will become as ubiquitous and as boring as many of the commercial fragrances and lose its relevancy and cache.”
Smoke and scent is ancient — and in reaching back in the etymological bridge to the past — you will find that fume is drawn from the Proto Indo European *dhumo. The PIE are primeval tongues, and fume, in the distant and ancient heart of our seed languages, is Sanskrit: dhumah, Old Church Slavic: dymu, the Lithuanian: dumai, Old Prussian dumis “smoke,” the Middle Iranian dumacha, or “fog,” and finally the bridge from the ancient world to the “modern” — Greek: thymos which is “spirit, mind, soul”. These are ancient words, expressions which thrived centuries before the Greco-Roman era. The bridge to the Latin, fumare, “to smoke, steam” and to the Old French — fum “smoke, steam, vapor” is a more recent positioning — 600 years back, to 1000 years ago. But that underlying concept of a scent mist or fog — that might be many centuries before the common era. And by the conceptual and linguistic bridges of centuries, smoke, reek, funk, toke, smog, smother, smolder, camouflage, dust, flue, vaporize and yen — there are strings.
Whereas I was not a huge fan of Parfum Sacre, I love Parfum Sacre Intense; in this case the flanker outshines its predecessor. It is a more erotic, carnal and resinous version of the original. The woodsy accords are more prominent on my skin, and the floral notes are supporting players, (with the orange note the most prominent) as the clove, cinnamon, warm amber and smoky vanilla take center stage. It is truly one of the most complex and sultry fragrances I have encountered this year.
