Dorin and Made in Italy

I am feeling very ambitious at this moment that I’ll get all five of these reviewed.  Ethiopian night (yesterday) at the newly vegetarian YMCA cafeteria has created some delicate problems that manifested all night.  In other words, I wound up skipping half a day of classes to recuperate. I am eating again and have my glass of red wine (hence the optimism), so we may get all five!

The Dorins are a recreation that are now being sold at the Haute Parfumerie in Harrod’s in London.  The official tale –  Maison Dorin is an 18th century perfume company which became the official purveyor to the Royal Court of Versailles in 1780.  The house boutique on the Rue Grenier Saint-Lazare in Paris was founded by Marguerite Montansier, a celebrated actress and changed hands several times over the following years getting its name from JIM Dorin in 1817.  In January 1998 the Maison Dorin was given a new lease on life thanks to Bashar and Imane Nasri.  They released several fragrances that were originally created in 1921.

The problem usually with recreations is the state of perfume-making back in the 18th century was pretty different. They just wanted perfume to smell like what they wanted it to smell like. Think of it as the realism period for perfumerie.

Un Air de Damas Fullah has a top note of bergamot; a middle note of jasmine; and a base note of musk. This is a straightforward jasmine scent with a nice musky base.  For the time, if it’s fairly true to its original scent, a wonderfully made oriental that stays nicely jasmine and not lethally indolic.  It’s really lovely.  It may or may not have been groundbreaking back in the day, but if you’re a fan of historical perfumes to track the progression through time, I think you’d find it interesting.

Un Air de Damas Taif Rose has top notes of bergamot and lily-of-the-valley; a middle note of rose; and base notes of woods and musk.  I don’t know about the other notes in this. I sprayed this on before meditation class, and for three hours, it’s  been a seriously wonderful taif rose, rivaling the rose you find in the Arabian ouds.  I have no idea if this was revolutionary for its time or if they made the roses this strong, but if you love roses strong and thick, this should do it for you.

I know, I sorta suck at reviewing historical perfumes.  Shoot me, I like modern perfumerie.

Made in Italy is this teeny brande we saw at Harvey Nick’s that I wanted to just keep walking past ( on the way to the Alexander McQueen scarf), but Lisa made me stop and sniff. I was expecting a bathtub of mediocrity, and it surprisingly exceeded my expectations.  Not all of them did, but three of them were pretty excellent

Sicily has notes of amber, neroli, freesia, jasmine, immortelle, hay, cedarwood, amber, patchouli, agarwood and myrrh. This thing is a cornucopia of smell. There’s so much going on on the open, I have no idea what to pay attention to.  It’s like what everyone tells me my first hour in Delhi will be like.  Sweet, hay, pancake syrup and church.  It all smooths out some,  the cacaphony of smell becomes more rounded and blurred, but just that sweet pitch of hay, immortelle and myrrh and that someone put it in one perfume and somehow made it work makes me happy.

Sardinia has notes of tea leaves, heather, juniper, artemesia, honey, broom, mastic shrubs, cedarwood, vetiver and ambrette.  Wait, they left of one note – armpit skank.  This thing has my bosoms heaving, certain there is a swarthy, sweaty Sardinian guy outside my window.  Lots of honey, I don’t get much smoke, and zero heather, juniper or artemesia. They could be there, but the swarthy Italian guy sitting on my arm sweating obviously tucked them into some nether part just to see if I’d look harder for them.  Two Elks were rutting outside the building we had the Tantra class in.  It may be them sitting on my arm.

Rome has notes of notes of bergamot, mandarin, elemi, orris, rum, olibanum, cedarwood, vetiver and patchouli.  I’ve got mixed feelings on this one.  There are some things I like in it, but ultimately, with the list of notes in it, it winds up too smooth, too slick for me. It’s interesting, and I keep thinking I should like it more and finally decided maybe, since it was the last thing on a long day of  being sick I tried, it needs another shot with a fresh arm.