Sometimes You Just Need a Little Something: Roja Dove Musc Aoud

Sorry this post is so late- for those of you who don’t know, I am in the middle of a major remodeling project at my place. New front yard complete with retaining walls, new paint in and out and new front doors, security stuff and remodels of most of the interiors. Somehow I have gotten roped into being the defacto quality control person/project manager for this, trying to tell workmen that no, we really don’t want them to fill in the holes in the door jambs where the locks and deadbolts engage because we have this crazy, nutty idea that maybe we would like to sleep behind and leave our empty home with, you know, doors that actually lock. Because we like to have something that says “security” in our minds. Otherwise we would have front doors that were made from decorative shower curtains or glass beads or maribou feathers. Oh, and telling the landscape people that no, they cannot show up before 8 or on weekends with wood chippers and chainsaws, then getting phone calls from the company stating that this is “how they do it in LA.” Well, pumpkin, A) you aren’t in LA as one could augur from the different colored street signs, building address or maybe the fact that out local City Hall is looming over your left shoulder on the corner. But I am sure when it is done it will be very nice, if I am not residing at that point in a small room at Trembling Acres lined in cunning and bouncy neoprene and injecting Lithium smoothies.

So how do I cope? The stickiest perfumes I can get my hands on. I was in ScentBar the other day (you knew that was coming) and was playing around. There was a bottle of Roja Dove Musk Oud on the counter and I had to try. I am going to re-pring the rather purple but completely apt description from the LucyScent website: “Roja Dove’s Musk Aoud is deeply, carnally suggestive. The musk is warm and suggestive of both animal and human fur. But what really rocks our boat is the current of smoky, oily sweetness running though the fragrance. The tensile weight here suggests centuries of smells packed in one on top of another, finally merging into one suggestive whole. We find it incredibly sexy. In fact, if we arrive at a bacchanalia and this scent isn’t being pumped through the air ducts, then we’re leaving.”

Yes, it is all that. It’s not a shy or retiring scent- it lists bergamot, lemon and rose as notes and they are there and discernible, but the show on this one is entirely the old, leather and musk. This is one of those perfumes that perfume-haters have nightmares about: it is incredibly dense and almost old-school in the way in which it draws you in with those musky tendrils. It also has the half-life of plutonium and my application last night laughed (in a no doubt throaty timbre accompanied by a derisive sneer and toss of hair) at my morn gin shower, so if you are planning on wearing this for a seductive evening out (and I fervently recommend that you do, man or woman) you do not schedule Confession or a court appearance the next day.

Of course there is a price to pay for this, and it’s $485 for 30ML or $795 for 100ML. I would think that unless you have decided that you are really Alla Nazimova that they 30ML would last you for eons. Were Lotto winnings in my immediate future I think I would go for the 100ML and release my well-hidden inner Valentino.

Photo from LuckyScent site; my sample was asked for and received from ScentBar.