Perfume Review: Andy Tauer L’Air du Désert Marocain

L’Air du Désert Marocain by the Swiss perfumer Andy Tauer is “a perfume that sends one dreaming of far oases”. When I start quoting Baudelaire it is a sure sign that I am in love with a scent. There is nothing I like more than a perfume that is evocative of far-away lands, a perfume that is “rich, glorious and forbidden, having the expansive power of infinities, amber, musk, benjamin and incense, that sing of the ecstasies of spirit and sense.” Inspired by the Maghreb desert, L’Air du Désert Marocain is everything I admire in a fragrance; it is superbly blended, exotic, deep, forceful and yet, because of its very smooth blend, it is eminently wearable and strangely comforting. It envelopes me like a luxurious, ornamented blanket from an opulent tent of a sheikh. L’Air du Désert Marocain smells just like I imagine that tent would, and I understand completely why Andy Tauer’s site describes it as the scent of desire. L’Air du Désert Marocain is a predominantly amber scent on my skin, a complex, multifaceted and multi-staged fragrance. At the first stage, the amber note is herbal-spicy, accompanied by coriander and cumin. As the scent develops on my skin, it darkens, the amber acquires a leather-like undertone, rich and smoky; soon, it is made even darker and more mysterious by a note that I can only describe as incense-like. According to the perfume description, L’Air du Désert Marocain’s heart is composed of rock rose and jasmine, but I must say that the floral notes are lost on my skin. The drydown of L’Air du Désert Marocain is glorious amber, just the way I like it, opaque, intense and warm, what I call a “churchy amber”, because again, to my nose, it has a subtle hint of incense. I admire the way the notes don’t completely disappear with each stage of the scent development, for example, I can still smell coriander and cumin in the drydown, and the wonderful smoky leather note is also apparent to my nose till the very end. I must say that I am not at all sure there is leather among the notes of L’Air du Désert Marocain; perhaps the notes combine to create an illusion of leather on my skin. But the note is there, to my nose, and I love its dark smokiness and richness. I understand that Andy Tauer is at the moment working on his third scent, which will feature leather as the main accord; I am very much looking forward to trying it. L’Air du Désert Marocain can be found on blueroll.com or lemaroc.ch, SFr. 85.00 for 3,4oz. I will leave you with Baudelaire’s poem The Scent Bottle; come back next week for the review of Andy Tauer’s second scent, Le Maroc Pour Elle. I must warn you though, there will be more Baudelaire quoting. The Scent-bottle There are heady scents that seem to find all substances porous. One might say that they could permeate glass. - Opening a casket from the Orient - one whose antiquated lock grates, sulkily squealing; or in an abandoned house some cabinet redolent with Time's acrid breath, black with decay, dust-laden, sometimes you may find one old vial, whose lost soul, released, springs to life again. *The photo of L’Air du Désert Marocain and the beautiful graphic are here by Andy Tauer’s kind permission.