Salome, I always wondered how it must’ve felt to have someone (a king!) lust after you so hard that they would do anything you ask, if only you would dance the dance of The Seven Veils….and you, humiliated and vengeful and spurned, ask for the spurner’s head! On a platter. What jumble of conflicting emotions must’ve caused that choice? Did you regret it, once you’d made the demand? Or were you so full of fury and pent-up lust yourself that only the ultimate sacrifice could assuage your boiling blood and heaving bosom and the white-hot fury of a young woman scorned? Musette would love to know.
Well, I don’t know how you felt. But I now know how you smelled when you intoxicated the king. Byredo Parfums Seven Veils is intensely animalistic, with a spicy oriental thread running through a rooty-floral heart (with a hint of dirt and sweat), like molten gold burnouts on a silken burnoose. I smell jasmine, like little silver bells tinkling atop elegant hennaed feet, though there is no jasmine in the notes (perhaps that is the Tiger Orchid?). It’s not full-blown lush, Seven Veils. Instead, it’s the promise of creamy lushness – the hint of hot, female sensuality…just before it explodes into blazing sexuality. Perhaps that’s the orchid, as it opens, fully, slowly revealing its nether parts and the rich scent within.
I have had a hard time with Byredo – I keep wanting to love the line, if for no other reason than my beloved Andy reps the line at Barneys. Hadn’t worked for me yet. But Andy encouraged me to try Seven Veils because of the diaphanous shifts as it flits, then settles, then flits again across your skin (those are my descriptions, btw. Andy wouldn’t be caught nekkid saying something that silly – he said “try it. it changes. a lot”). Earlier up there I called it a spicy oriental but it’s not really – it just gives the impression of a spicy oriental, as seen through a shimmering golden veil. It’s really a luminous, spicy skin scent with a little stabby edge (I’m thinking that’s the pimento berries). I really can imagine Herod’s increasing intoxication, as Salome’s rising scent wafts towards him…and each of the Seven Veils drifts languorously across the marble floor. It’s heady stuff, indeed. I think I’ve finally found the Byredo I can love. Even if I can’t love Salome.
Notes, per the Byredo website:
Top: Carrot, Pimento Berries
Heart: Tahitian Vanilla Flower, Laurier Rose, Glycine, Tiger Orchid
Base: Sandalwood, Vanilla Bean
$220 for 100ml at Barneys, where I spritzed.
btw: Salome of popular legend differs quite a bit from the Salome described by scholars of ancient texts but she’s no angel, no matter how you look at it.
photo: Eartha Kitt as Salome (shake it, shake it)
ps. don’t fret! March will be back soon. She’s still jammin’ on personal business – and it’s all just drudgery, nothing Brutal. But Right Now is challenging, timewise, so I’m pinch-hitting. She’ll be back shortly. She promised!
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