Welcome to my "Guest Reviewer of The Day" column. My aim is to invite friends, reviewers I particularly appreciate and people who inspired and supported me over the years to participate to my blog. They will review a fragrance, something they particularly care about and share it with all the readers...Please note all the reviews in this section are posted with the authorization and collaboration of the authors.
Today's guest is one of the top ten most active reviewers at Basenotes, master of the grotesque fragrance and friend, Darvant.
From his biography...
"I've gradually learned to appreciate *the real meaning and the evocative power of the fragrance* along the way of my life, when the summers of my youth flew away and the scent of my beloved on my clothes used to fill with bitter-sweet memories my empty heart. When the whiff of a *particular fragrance used to resurrect for a while the vision od my departed good friend and together with him the happy seasons of the past.
Today *I'm a fragrance collector who enjoys each time to choose the right smell for the occasion, being it a special or an ordinary one, a moment to be spent in a club or at work. My real name is Ettore, I crave for dark and mysterious fragrances and love to travel around the world with a parfumed wake on my back..."
Darvant's gift to Nero Profumo is...
Salvador Dali Pour Homme: Danse Macabre
Suggestions apart, this oriental fougere is one of the few real draculesque, almost macabre scents out there, a juice (as already written somewhere by others) to be worn with caution for secret unmentionable rendez-vous. Try to smell it, in the main part of its development at least, it’s disturbing, metallic (the initial smell reminds a bit of urine), bloody, rancid but crude at once (i know the sensations are opposite but I perceive them both). As soon as the base notes are set down, the scent becomes sweeter but still sinister, projecting the smell of a retro and bohemian deep lounge bursting of baroque objects, pictures, mirrors and antiques ,becoming then so tarry, churchy, leathery, old fashion and in my perception spicy, as a magic ritual potion full of wings of bat and nails of dragon.
It's told they have blended more than 100 ingredients. The scent reminds me of the taste of a typical barbarian sweet cake from south Italy, Calabria to be precise, prepared with blood of pork. Who follows my reviews on Basenotes knows my passion for naughty dark potions. This one, emphasis apart, is something olfactory grotesque as an obscure hooded fellow whose you detect under hood white eyes without a face. The problem is that this potion for 3/4 of its development is almost off-putting, strangely and marvellously off-putting. I figure in my mind some old desolate aristocratic theatre but paradoxically (it depends from the level of development) even a huge bare basement where you feel a presence somewhere behind a pillar or an heap of tires.
This scent is not particularly viscous or dense but is anyway cold as a stone and dark as dark ink or better it projects the colour of its bottle, dreadful and appalling with those gigantic lips. Something to wear just in specific occasions and when you feel in a certain mood, like a solitary dead man walking in this strange life out but I wouldn't dare to use it on a first date expecially if you get there moody and dark clothed, as she could run away scared to death by your dangerously kinky aurea.
I read somewhere Dalì Pour Homme has the smell of some acid fruit and insects in decomposition down the pit of a red-violet latrine. Specially at the beginning the smell of urine and addle fruit comes to mind. In the cold, distant, separated top notes the scent contains anise, basil, clary sage and citrus-lavender. It anchors the smell to 80's and since the starting the scent is heavy but dry-herbal. I perceive a sort of animalic vibe yet from this stage and this element is in contrast with the aromatic greeness of the first whiffs in a twisting botanic-animal game of complexity. This corporeal feel is perceivable throughout the trip by the inquiring nose. The heart of the scent expresses nocturnal flowers as lily of the valley, jasmine and obscure geranium. The situation keeps on being for a while a metallic and impersonal affair but is destined to evolve slowly in a sort of more obscure, deliciously stuffy, smoother and decadent stage. The baroque dry down is indeed woody with vanilla, amber, dirty musk and leather which make the scent oriental and mysterious though holding an averagely dry temperament. Good Longevity.
Rating: 8/10
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