L'Ombre Fauve Redux

Roland Barthes wrote: "You experience a moment of fascination in the presence of another person. I cannot classify this other, the other is, precisely, unique, the singular image which has come to correspond to the specialty of my desire." And also: "I encounter millions of bodies in my life, of these millions I may desire some hundreds, but of these hundreds I love only one. The other with whom I am in love designates for me the specialty of my desire". Replace the word "person" with "perfume", and does it not still make sense? Right this moment Parfumerie Generale's L'Ombre Fauve designates for me the specialty of my desire. I wrote about it before, and I have always liked it, but it is only in the last couple of weeks that I came to love it. My favorite philosophy professor used to call this kind of occurrence, "knew, knew and suddenly understood!". What makes us smell perfumes differently after being familiar with them for ages, what makes them suddenly move us in the most profound way... is a mystery, and that mystery is one of the things that makes relationships with perfumes almost as fascinating as (and as difficult as) relationships with people. L'Ombre Fauve is patchouli, amber and cedar on me, and that description is as (un)likely to do it justice as would a multi-paragraph post on all intricacies of its composition. Remember? "I cannot classify this other, the other is, precisely, unique..." Which is why, when I fall in love with perfume, I always find it hard to describe it in any sort of meaningful manner. I feel that I can't do it justice and I don't want to rob it of its magic, of its "specialty" by taking it apart. L'Ombre Fauve is dark, intense, sensual, it is a demanding perfume that scares and excites me. "I am engulfed, I succumb ..." One (literally) 100ml bottle of L'Ombre Fauve might still be available at The Perfume Shoppe, please write to Naz to find out.