Desert lions
Is a terrible drought something you have dreamed of? Is its aridness something you have seen with your mental eye? “Perfumes are pictures, painted with scents” the creator of today’s scent says. “We work on the brightness, the tonality of the colours, the contrasts; we draw lines and figures and thus, create impressions that are unique and remain natural” . Part of the Andy Tauer perfume line, which also includes Le Maroc pour Elle and the newest addition Lonestar Memories, L’air du desert marocain draws inspiration from vast, spare spaces of land where one can revert to introspection, free of the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
Andy Tauer is a Swiss self-taught perfumeur residing in Zurich with a very deserved dedicated following, it seems, despite his relative new status among perfume circles. (And keeps his own perfume blog, what else could one ask for?)
Although Le Maroc pour elle didn’t impress me that much -but I attribute that to my inherent dislike of most rose renditions, nothing more- I was surprised by the originality and style of his second offering L’air du desert.
A very, very interesting perfume that could alone answer the question of someone who is not into small companies and artisanal houses as to what defines “niche”.
Literally translating as The Moroccan desert wind, one can justifiably imagine it as a dry, hot perfume full of the scorching Sahara sun.
Though Serge Lutens came up with a comparable idea in Chergui, which is also named after the dry, hot Moroccan wind from the desert , that one is a considerably sweeter, rounder, smoldering oriental. L’air has the elegant physiognomy of a chypre.
Andy Tauer must have been quite taken by his stay in the country, because he says the following about his inspiration behind it: “When I created l'Air du désert marocain, which still is my personal favourite, I had a picture in mind, a hotel bed in Marakkesh, in the early evening, the sun gone.
The moon would rise soon and I imagined myself being in this room, lying on the bed, exhausted from the heat of the day, with the window open, letting the cool air in.
A soft and dry wind coming in, carrying the scents from the near desert, and the spices of the busy streets below.
Lying on the bed, dreaming of a moon raising over the sandy hills of the Saharan desert, I dreamt the fragrance of a Moroccan night.”
Myself I don’t think of hotel beds when I smell it, I think of sleeping on the nocturnal sands of a vast, uninterrupted space accompanied by lions.
L’air du desert is a take-no-prisoners, almost mineral affair of isolated land, hot stone, dying trees and cool nights that resembles somewhat Ambre Sultan, the infamous Palais Royal Serge Lutens scent , but perhaps even better.
They both share a herbal bitter start with aromatic and spice elements (here it is coriander) that segue into the glorious, aggressive, dominant cedar of course (a wood essence famously harvested in Morocco) labdanum/cistus, vetiver with its musty smell and dirty patchouli, an ingredient brought back from the dead and devouring like a zombie half the recent crop of perfumes for their own good. Here it is infinitely to its advantage and it renders the modern chypre accord that I have detected in seasons past. Patchouli and vetiver form the basis of the modern chypre: you heard it here first…
L’air du desert combines also many citrusy notes (lemon, bergamot, petitgrain) that give it a sharper prologue. While the geranium is perhaps the same rosy note with some of the notes I detected in le Maroc pour elle, interwoven with Moroccan jasmine it provides a floral aspect.
Whereas Ambre Sultan sweetens and becomes quite dense on the skin, I feel L’air du desert drier, never letting the slight touch of vanilla and ambergris to take center stage, but instead keeps them at the coulisses. It isn’t always as dry though and seems like different conditions in humidity and heat bring out its attributes in a different way. I was surprised to smell sweetness to it when testing during a heat wave!
Andy admits of using certain synthetics and I would be very curious as to what exactly produces that interchange of dryness and sweetness, be it the nuance of natural floral essences or some new molecule churned out of the laboratory.
The comparative dryness in comparison to other perfumes however gives a craggy, austere, high-cheekboned physiognomy to the fragrance that makes me think it would sit particularly well on a tough Joan Crawford type or a male with the style and knowledge to carry this as it’s supposed to. I suspect it might be even better on men and their craggier skin.
As a final note, let me be frank with you: I’m not a Joan Crawford type. While I am not one to go for pastry-sweet perfumes and while I do like chypres, I don’t see myself wearing this all the time and I don’t see this pleasing the general public enough to become a huge best seller. And that’s perfectly all right, as it is not in the interest of art to mix with the hoi polloi.
But as with Messe de Minuit by Etro which is its own thing too, I feel compelled to keep a bit of it for hours of existential nihilism. Do try it!!
Artwork:Sleeping gupsy by Rousseau courtesy of Allposters.com
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