Al Sahara 100ml, photo by The Different Company
I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, something gleams…“ – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The first time I ever saw golden dunes of Sahara desert I was fourteen years old. All the books I’ve read about it, each and every documentary I’ve watched, photos or first-hand experience stories I’ve heard didn’t prepare me for what I felt on a sizzling late June day, once I rushed to take the trekking boots off and let my bare toes sunk deep into that hot, orange-reddish-golden sand of North Africa. I was there, a small dot in the infinite universe, yet the universe was as much a part of me as I was the part of it.
Sahara Deset, photo by Pexel
The first time ever I saw its face (as the song goes) I thought that the sun reflected in it and that if only more people could see the Milky Way as it can be observed from the pitch-black darkness of Sahara starry nights, the world would definitely be a better place. Do you remember that scene from the movie Contact, when Jodie Foster is trying to describe her contact with extraterrestrial life, somewhere behind Vega? The moment when she is crying in awe, lacking the words to describe the beauty of what she felt? This is how I must have looked when Sahara, the most alien place on Earth, entered my veins for the first time.
Starry, starry nights, photo by Pexel
The feeling of infinity. Overwhelming, consuming, soul-moving, humbling infinity: I’ve never felt more connected to Nature, never felt more alive than in the (seemingly) vast emptiness and silence of Sahara. I fell in love with it irrevocably, promised that I shall return and kept returning: from the Atlas Mountains downwards in Morocco to Mali, from borders of the Nile Valley at Aswan in Egypt to the Nubian desert, from the Mediterranean Coast down to entire Phoenician and Roman cities conserved in the sand, and the other way – leading to the Red Sea side, each time taking a small quantity of sand from different locations with me. I’ve traveled to many other deserts all over the world, few are still on my bucket –list, but my first love, my Sahara is the one that I feel at one with.
Al Sahra sample, photo by Elena Cvjetkovic
Al Sahra. Sahara. It was very brave indeed to name a fragrance after her (I always refer to deserts in the feminine gender, just look at the lush curves of dunes), ancient and mighty, soft as smooth sand of its endless dunes and harsh as suffocating winds that rage above its surface.
Master Perfumer Emilie Coppermann of Symrise courtesy of the Fragrance Foundation
Master Perfumer Emilie Coppermann, working with The Different Company for over nine years, dared to express a different olfactory emotion, a vibration of Sahara, an Oriental that doesn’t fall anywhere between Floral Orientals to Woody Orientals, the warm and sensual, vanilla and spice fragrances: the only rose I’ve ever seen in Sahara is a desert, stone rose. The other precious stones there are salt rocks, bricks of salt that the proud Tuareg traditionally exchanged for food and supplies, traveling in annual Azalai caravans across Mali…yes, they were the salt of the Earth, and salt was once worth the same as gold. A desert stone flower it is, a new creation of an Oriental-Mineral!
My Souvenirs From Egypt, Location: Western Desert near Al Wahat (Oasis) Al Kharjah, photo by Elena Cvjetkovic
Al Sahra opens like Fleur de sel, a salt that forms a delicate crust on the surface of seawater as it evaporates – mineral and cold like early mornings in the desert, just before the sunrise. That crisp quality is deeply sensual at the same time, a sharp metallic breath inhaled, the one that awakes all your senses at once. Contrasts and shades emerge: a light, delicate and translucent tender vibration of Sand Lillies trembling in haze rising above the desert that is heating up underneath the piercing-hot rays of sunshine. By now you can clearly feel a distinctive salty accord, tainted with incense dust, trails of scents carried by wind that are coming from a distant oasis. Or is it just an illusion of an oasis?
The warmth comes in waves, shifting like the sand of dunes in the wind. The incense is dry and strong, curling around elegant ambery, deep and powerful Cistus, resinous in such a beautiful, subtle, almost ambergris-like, heavenly skin-musky way. The ultimate classic woody-Oriental note lingers hours later on your skin – specks of sandalwood glowing like tiny sparkling studs made of desert sand, never pulling too deep down the patchouli route, remaining elegant and graceful at all times.
Sand from Sahara Desert, location Gabr Awhn in southwestern Libya, photo by Elena Cvjetkovic
I would’ve expected this much from The Different Company Juste Chic Collection: a different approach, artistic, creative, using exceptional materials and remaining utterly elegant. There are many fragrant interpretations of Sahara: most of them are poetic interpretations written with fragrant notes of oud, roses, amber, balsamic accords or warm spices. Scents of epic sunsets observed from oasis’, palm tree leaves ruffling in the wind, breath of crimson and gold arabesque decorated heavy silk curtains providing soothing shade, depicting oriental opulence. There are also desert-themed fragrances that lean toward floral chypres, with warm, dry and mineral undertones or the sweet, gourmand ones, with date accords or smoke of incense.
Al Sahra is different, contrasting, modern and ancient at the same time: a desert rose made of salt and rock, transparent spice, dry incense, and beautiful cistus and sandalwood seal of sensuality.
Desert, desire, shadows and silence.“
And to soothe my longing for Her, I’ll spray some Al Sahra and wait for the April rains that sometimes bring Saharan dust, covering the cars in red-colored mud: I dip my fingers in those small islands of desert sand that have traveled with wind for thousands of miles and dream of dipping my toes in Her sand again. “I dream of rain, aman, aman“:
Sweet desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower.“ – Sting
Notes: Mineral accord, Salt Crystals, White Violet Sand Lily, Cinnamon from Madagascar, Incense, Cistus Labdanum, Wind of the desert, Patchouli, Sandalwood.
Elena Cvjetkovic, Editor and Author of The Plum Girl
Disclaimer: A 2 ml sample of Al Sahra was kindly provided by The Different Company for my consideration. Opinions and feelings are – as always – of my own.
Thanks to The Different Company we have draw for a registered ÇaFleureBon reader for the EU + UK, AUSTRALIA, USA and Canada for a 15 ml travel bottle of Al Sahra. Tell us where you live and what you found most appealing in this review of Al Sahra, what your thoughts are and where you live! Draw closes3/17/2020
Photos: Elena Cvjetkovic, The Different Company, Pexels
This is our Privacy and Draw Rules Policy
We announce the winners only on our site and on our Facebook page, so like Çafleurebon and use our blog feed…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume.
Follow us on Instagram @cafleurebon @the_plum_girl @thedifferentcompany @emilie.copperman