Burn, Barbershop. Burn.

Perfume names are - at best - a subtle suggestion of what the scent inside has to offer, but in general the name is just another marketing tool. It is therefore really refreshing to find a perfume house that labels its bottles in a does exactly what it says on the tin manner with a humourous twist. 
Meet Burning Barbershop by D.S. & Durga:

My visualisation of Burning Barbershop by D.S. & Durga

If you ever wondered how it would smell if you set fire to the old school barbershop around the corner, now you have the answer. BB is a spearmint shaving cream brûlée that has been torched too long. And that is a good thing. A very good thing. Modern, unique, urban, old fashioned, clever. Verging on the masculine side, but getting softer after a few hours. Given notes are spearmint, lime, spruce and lavender followed by rose, vanilla, burnt oil and hay. Brilliant. 

How and where to wear:

This separates the men from the boys, and that goes for all genders,  make sure you have the confidence to pull it off.

Cologne du Maghreb

I think I mentioned in one of my last posts that I am not looking for refreshment in a perfume, and while that is still the case, I have to agree that a spritz of a well made cologne can be a bit nice indeed. There are a few new and lots of good old candidates on the market, from the cheap and cheerful to the eye-wateringly expensive, but I personally don't see the point in paying a huge amount of money for something that is just a short little pleasure and has to be used in abundance to make an impact. 

Tauer perfumes Cologne du Maghreb is sort of in the middle ground, price wise, and I when I was offered a sample I was very grateful for the opportunity to test it. Andy Tauer created this cologne from all natural ingredients because he believed it didn't need anything else. The result is very much the equivalent of proper home made lemonade: Made of 3 ingredients and a thousand times better than anything you can buy in the supermarket. 

It opens with a wonderful citrus note, not too bitter, not too sweet, not too green, just right and bright and gradually warming on the skin into a more golden orange. There is a hint of what I would clumsily describe as 'dust' which I find unusual and pleasant. Around an hour into wearing a touch of warm, dry wood adds the composition which then stays in a kind of hovering layer just above the skin....and then it's gone. On me, that is. A lot of bloggers describe their ride differently, expressing  great surprise at CdM's longevity. I envy them, because I would very much like it to last longer on me. In all fairness, colognes often require a repeat. And therein lies a certain pleasure. It was the idea of repeating the opening again, and again, and again that finally gave me the inspiration for the visual of Cologne du Maghreb.

Seamless geometric repeat patterns, or Tessellations, are a whole world of wonder. If you've ever looked intensely at intricate patterns and complicated ornaments your eyes got probably lost following the meanderings of eternal ribbons, laces, triangles and interwoven colours. The system behind them is pure geometry and surprisingly easy. (ish) It all starts with a primary cell, the smallest particle of a pattern. This can be a square, a triangle, or, if you are M.C. Escher, pretty much anything. 

The next step is creating a repeatable tile, I used the 4 cells in a pinwheel rotation to form this particular, square tile. Had I chosen a different symmetry, the end result would look very different. In fact, you can create up to 24 different patterns from just 1 primary cell depending how you turn or mirror it. 

Now you can repeat the tile endlessly and you have simple lace pattern. 

For the visualisation of Cologne du Maghreb I chose not to just recreate a vaguely Moroccan inspired pattern, but to capture this rhythm of reapplying CdM by breaking the absolute symmetry of the pattern. You won't be doing a repeat spritz at equally timed intervals, so what will happen on the skin is an overlap of layers at different stages of the scent. The effect can turn a simple structure, may it be olfactory or visual, into a surprisingly complex experience. I certainly enjoyed mine.

My interpretation of Cologne du Maghreb by Andy Tauer




How and where to wear:
A good travel companion, this one. Take it with you when you know that the journey will be long but rewarding.

4711, the gift that kept on giving

The run up to Christmas: the busiest time of the year for the fragrance industry. What exactly is it that makes us reaching for nice smelling things as presents for loved ones and not so loved ones in equal and enormous quantities? Is it the lack of fragrant flowers and plants during the winter? (works only in the Northern hemisphere...) Are perfumes and soaps just conveniently universal and independent of tricky matters like clothes sizes? Is it the way the bottles and boxes look luxurious and presentable? Can it be that many perfume get bought simply because they are usually located at the ground floor of massive department stores, close to the entrance, making it easy to get in, buy and get out in less than 5 minutes? Perfumes certainly make very good last minute presents, and I did read in an article not long ago that it's not uncommon for panic stricken husbands to buy entire perfume ranges because they have forgotten the name of their wives' favourite perfume. In these cases I wish that the wive wears a Roja Dove or Bond No.9 to make that lack of attention and respect at least painfully expensive. I wonder what the women who get gifted in that way do with the unwanted scents. Ebay? The Tory party's xmas raffle?

I certainly know what happened to Undesirables in our family. They went into the Christmas tombola held by my parent's local choir. Every year at the beginning of December choir members and local shopkeepers would drop packages and gift vouchers at our house. My mum would then pack them up nicely and sometimes make gift bundles if the objects in question were just too embarrassingly cheap. For that reason we had a very good idea of what horrors were lurking behind the shimmery paper and lovely ribbons when all the boxes were laid out at the table reading for the new owners with the lucky numbers. It was a 4711 gift set that we aptly named the Wanderpokal, because it got donated again and again and again, over years and years without exception. We knew it was the always the same one because of a characteristic scratch mark on the box. 

In my youth 4711 Eau de Cologne was a regarded as a traditional cheap smelling scent that could be found in every German household, collecting dust on the bathroom shelf. For me it never registered as a fragrance that should and could be worn, more like a medicinal all round "thing" that grandmothers would spray on a handkerchief and dab on their temples when they felt a bit faint and nauseous. Why that vile smelling stuff would be any good in these instances I never understood. But some things , like spinach, just need time to get appreciated.

My interpretation of 4711 Eau de Cologne

Fast forward some 20 odd years, the house of 4711 had undergone a miraculous transformation. Like other weird and old fashioned icons of Germanity, the herb liqueur Jaegermeister for example, the brand had started to regain a certain cult status and sales had started to rise accordingly. It was then that I took my first unbiased sniff. And surprise, surprise, I actually liked it. The freshness was not as medicinal as I remembered and all in all it was nicely balanced and totally wearable. An orange, bergamot and lemon layer over a floral, and slightly woody base. It's not only not offensive, it actually does give you a wake me up moment, so my grandmothers had a point with their fragrant handkerchiefs. It's also a good dupe for Tom Ford's Neroli Portofino. 

I smell clean and proper when I wear it and that's usually not something I aim for when reaching for a perfume, but there are moments when this scent is just right. It's a bit like a watercolour, sparkly and transparent, but with a solid geometrical structure. I haven't tried to layer it with something else and have the feeling that might go horribly wrong, but if any of you have done so with success, let me know. These days a 4711 gift set would not get re-wrapped and thrown into the next tombola. I'd rather keep it for myself.

How and where to wear:

Walk the walk of shame with an air of innocence (but still have that shower...)