Hey Hey Posse Peeps! Portia from Australian Perfume Junkies back with something so incredibly special that had to be shared with you all, Mohur Extrait. Recently I was in Paris and caught up with my buddy Neela Vermeire, the conversation between us always veers and careens like a drunken sailor first night back on land. Jumping from one thing to another, opera, events, friends, fragrance, food, cities, politics, jewellery, hair, books, perfume, perfume, perfume and it goes so fast that sometimes I have to check that we’re still on the same page.

Neela is clever, articulate, well traveled and read, loves life and food and together we have no holds barred fun. No wonder her fragrances are so complex, interesting and beautiful, they are a reflection of her enormous personality and experience. Wearing a Neela Vermeire Creation is like wearing a tapestry, a weaving of notes in a clear, beautiful and harmonious whole. Yes, it’s no surprise that I am a fan as well as a friend. Neela and her creations inspire me and show me that when you have a focused and clear objective and give 100% to it then you will have amazing results.

Mohur Extrait by Bertrand Duchaufour

Neela Vermeire Creations 2014

Fragrantica gives these featured accords:
Top: Cardamom, coriander, ambrette (musk mallow), carrot seeds, pepper, elemi
Heart: Iris, jasmine, rose, violet, almond, leather
Base: Sandalwood, amber, woody notes, patchouli, agarwood (oud), benzoin, vanilla, tonka bean

The first thing we need to talk about is the Mohur Extrait bottle it’s the same cast as her original bottles, round but purple with the lovely rippled, corrugated effect but it’s the heavy lid with Neela’s very beautiful cultural crossover design of a mandala with the Eiffel Tower as its spokes that I adore. A nod to Neela’s birthplace, India, and her current home, France, and how the two have combined to give her a vision so different and new. If you have one of Neela’s original clear bottles keep it, it’s a collectors item and I think will be a good investment in the future for bottle collectors.

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Mohur Extrait, I’m so excited to be finally able to write about it for you all. Neela gave me a sample last year and made me swear to secrecy. If you know Mohur you will know that among its incredible panoply of notes sits some of the most expensive and heady rose ever used in perfumery, and in enormous doses. The Neela Vermeire creations brand costs less than double a regular mainstream niche release but has up to eight times the expense of ingredients, yes you read right up to EIGHT times the cost of ingredients. Bertrand Duchaufour (who has often said that Neela is his most exacting customer: a perfectionist and a purist) was given no dollar value for his creations it only had to be what Neela considered to be perfect.

If you have not tried Mohur, or the Mohur Extrait, then I will do my best to explain how it lives on my skin. Though every wear is filled with its own nuance and splendour there is a definite change when you apply different moisturisers or body wash below Mohur, I think it’s because of the high content of naturals and how they are affected by your chemistry at the time.

Nothing on earth smells like the first heady rush of Mohur, the green, waxy, sweet herbal whoosh makes me swoon every time, if you were of a mind you could pick out the Indian spices and the bittersweet elemi, the pepper reads wet like a bell pepper and dry like fresh ground black pepper, and I have no freaking idea what carrot seeds smell like (sorry). Mohur was created as a reminiscence of the British Raj in India so though it is Indian effect, what I get a lot of is how the British lived in India, the spices from cooking, the large houses, estates and plantations, the wooden furniture carved and inlaid and waxed to high sheen with bees wax. Mohur is not a city scent as there is little of the close set humanity that you’d find in Connaught Place but I can imagine Shimla, the summer mountain retreat or even Kashmir.

Photo Stolen WikiMedia

Already in the first few Mohur Extrait minutes the milky almond and ROSES dominate the whole production, though nothing has left my olfactory field they power to the front and centre. Yes I can smell a whiff of iris with its powdery/woody but everything else seems completely in chorus mode for hours as the rose dominates, and joyously we smell almost every rose type, there are the boozy bourbons, the prim cool tea roses, the deepest spicy red and fruity orange, musky purple, arctic whites, it’s like walking through an enormous rose garden as if you’re wandering through the Huntington Rose Gardens outside LA in spring smelling all the roses in turn and together both heady and intoxicating. This section of regular Mohur’s life is quite long lasting and though it does wander through all the roses and show different facets it is quite linear, in the Extrait there is more definition and development. Maybe it’s the scale, Mohur Extrait is bigger.

Photo Stolen Huntington

Hours in to the Mohur Extrait experience and now we start to notice things that have played wonderful supporting roles move forward so you can notice the woods, resins and leather. You realise that they have been there all along and were just awaiting their moment. We are on the road to dry down now and slowly the roses recede into the distance, we are left with sweet vanilla/woods/patchouli but they are masterfully blended and on me no one is making a fuss, they are and they fade and they’re gone.

You’ll see in the photo below that Neela and I have been for dinner. We knew we needed a photo for this post and all was sailing smoothly until I remembered a thing called a Wet Willy, you put your pointer finger in your mouth and then stick it in some unsuspecting persons ear, by the time it gets to them it’s cold and wet like a dogs nose. Neela was a particularly good sport about it.

Mohur Extrait is ONLY available through Neela Vermeire, you must contact her through email: neelavermeire at gmail dot com. There are only 450 numbered bottles that will ship in the EU, otherwise you’ll have to get a perfume mule. 50ml of Mohur Extrait €340.
Neela is Offering a special discount to EU buyers if the say in their email, “I love Neela & Portia” and like NVC on Facebook. EASY!

Mohur Extrait GIVEAWAY

3 of our lucky readers will win 1 sample of Mohur Extrait posted anywhere in the world. Thank You Neela. Leave a hello in the comments to be included.

DRAW IN NOW CLOSED

Portia xx

All photos not otherwise noted have been supplied by Neela. THANKS BUDDY!