Revisiting Old Friends

By Tom

One of the things about moving (other than you get rid of a lot of stuff you no longer use) is rediscovering some of the things you have you'd forgotten about. Like the copy of a Martha Stewart cookbook that I was convinced I'd loaned to a friend, but stumbled across inside of an old briefcase I hadn't looked into in years.

It was true with some of my 'fumes as well. I did actually give some away- ones that I hadn't used in years and I even sold some off. But there were a few that I rediscovered and couldn't part with.

One was Yatagan. I love this scent, with it's intense, retro vibe. I'll just be lazy and cut and paste Marina's take on it since she's spot on: "Yatagan smells of grass, moss, earth, leather and hot, hungry, cruel bodies. It is an uncompromisingly dry and austere fragrance with no frills, i.e. no sweetness and no flowers. The first accord hits you with dark, sharp greenness of wormwood and artemisia, and after that aggressive start the scent never subsides, never relents. It gets darker and earthier, with notes of patchouli, vetiver, moss and labdanum being most prominent in the composition. Several wonderfully weird hours later, the leather and musk creep in bringing an even drier and quite animalic quality to the blend. Dirty, dry, devilishly alluring, Yatagan is one of the strangest scents I have ever loved, a dark balm for my 'Mongolian' soul."

I will add that I get a distinct note of celery in the opening, slightly bitter and very green. I think my bottle is likely very vintage, since it's far stronger than what's being peddled these days at LuckyScent and other places. That new Yatagan seems to have it's edge dulled a bit. My bottle is has more of a hairy-chested 70's kind of vibe to it. The new one seems a bot, well, waxed to me. But I think the new one is likely far more wearable than the old.

I'm not sure which formulation is being sold at Target in the US, but it's certainly a bargain at $29.39 for 4.2 ounces. My bottle was bought for about that years ago on South Broadway in downtown LA.

Photo stolen from Marina's review