New Perfume Review La Via del Profumo Palermo, Don Corleone- Sicilian Saga

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Like many I am big fan of The Godfather movies. Even the third one which is being released in a re-edited form this weekend. There is so much about the way the story of the Corleone family is told which has seemed timeless. One of the recurring motifs is while the family is at an innocent social event elsewhere there is violence happening. This is usually set to soaring music as the juxtaposition of innocence and gunfire co-exist in this family. There have been few perfumes which have been inspired by this. When I received my sample of La Via del Profumo Palermo, Don Corleone I was especially curious.

Abdes Salaam Attar

Dominique Dubrana aka Abdes Salaam Attar is one of the best all-natural perfumers we have. He has an almost supernatural attachment to his ingredients. It has produced some of my favorite perfumes I own. Reading the description on the website this is meant to be a fragrance of the people of Sicily. He wanted to capture their gregarious nature, their love for pastries, and the danger of violence. He succeeds but I was more drawn to thinking about those set pieces in the movie as a perfume based on the birthplace of Don Corleone should also.

It is done by creating a three-ingredient accord of vanilla, tuberose, and tobacco. These are ethically sourced natural ingredients. The care in obtaining them shows. Each of them has subtleties which add to their use here. It begins with the vanilla. The idea of the sweetness of bakery goods is here. Along with it is a strong green undercurrent reminding me of the orchid from which the pods come from. This green is the connective tissue to the other two ingredients. It reaches out and finds the slightly mentholated green inherent in tuberose. The venerable white flower is the diva of this perfume as she reaches out to pull you in. The green also attaches to the similarly mentholated green in the rich tobacco. This is the narcotic dangerous version of tobacco inviting you to just take a puff and then another before you are ensnared in its nicotinic clutches. As they come together the innocent sweetness of the vanilla is partner to the full-throated tuberose as the tobacco works off-screen doing bad things.

Palermo, Don Corleone has 12-14 hour longevity and moderate sillage.

As far as I know this is one of only a few perfumes inspired by The Godfather Saga. It reminds me strongly of the way innocence can be the alibi for violence. Abdes Salaam Attar also reminds me why he is such a great natural perfumer.

Disclosure: this review is based on a sample I purchased.

–Mark Behnke

Under the Radar: La Via del Profumo Tabac- Take a Breath

Posted on by in Mark Behnke, Under the Radar and tagged , , , .

Perfume has multiple positive effects. One of the most important to me is the way some fragrances provide a calming effect. I have many perfumes which I use as ways to soothe when things begin to feel too hectic. There is one perfumer who I have used his creation for this more than once. Dominique Dubrana aka Abdes Salaam Attar has been one of the foremost natural perfume educators we have. He also believes in the power of ethical perfumery. It is a collection which shows it with every one of the perfumes within it. I have one of his perfumes for every season to provide the psychic grounding they give me. For the winter La Via del Profumo Tabac is my choice.

La Via del Profumo is another of the early all-natural perfume lines which displayed the full potential of fragrance made this way. When these perfumes were released there was a canard that all-natural perfumes were somehow less than those which used synthetics. Every perfume here proves the inaccuracy of that. Abdes Salaaam Attar approaches his perfumes from understanding the source of your materials. It allows him to coax all the nuance available out of what he uses. Tabac is a great example of this.

Abdes Salaam Attar

Many tobacco scents draw me into their deeply narcotic embrace. This is done by amplifying the sweeter parts of tobacco. Tabac goes a different way. While things start off in that typical vein they transform to a drier version of tobacco that is different than most any other version out there.

In the early going that expected sweetness is what comes forth. It is a rich sweet leafy tobacco. It is kept that way with vanilla and tonka bean. The change is signaled by a spicy mélange which begins to dry out that tobacco while pulling back on the sweetness. A deeply warm amber completes the process revealing a dry herbal version of tobacco lurking underneath.

Tabac has 14-16 hour longevity and moderate sillage.

That shift from deeply sweet to desiccated leaf is what makes Tabac such a meditative perfume for me. I can flow with the changes until I find a place where I take a breath filling my senses with Tabac. If you have never tried any of the La Via del Profumo perfumes, they should be on your radar especially if you are interested in all-natural perfumes.

Disclosure: This review is based on a bottle I purchased.

–Mark Behnke

New Perfume Reviews Surrender to Chance Surrender & Cold Water Canyon- Jumpin’ Jasmine

Posted on by in Mark Behnke, New Perfume Reviews and tagged , , , , , , , .

I am often asked if I would like to create a perfume and I always answer with an emphatic shake of my head, “No.” One of the trends of 2014 has been the number of people who love perfume who have a different answer. A couple weeks ago I was contacted by Lisa Lawler and Patty White of the perfume sample site Surrender to Chance. They informed me that they has been working with one of my favorite natural perfumers Dominique Dubrana aka AbdesSalaam Attar on the first two fragrances to be created exclusively for Surrender to Chance. For their first two fragrances, Surrender and Cold Water Canyon, they decided to explore two very different versions of jasmine. One of them is meant to be a politely skanky sensual jasmine and the other a greener more herbal jasmine. Both succeed at showing the versatility of jasmine.

For Surrender, Ms. Lawler and Ms. White asked M. Dubrana to create a jasmine focused wedding scent. M. Dubrana responded with a blend of multiple jasmine absolutes. He also always manages to use an array of complementary notes which bring out some of the more subtle qualities in the central note. In Surrender it is carrot and hyraceum which provide the illumination.

Many may know Ms. White from her origins as one of the founders of the perfume blog Perfume Posse. It is the first blog I can remember having a dedicated discussion on skank in perfume. When you are using a lot of jasmine absolute the indoles are going to impart a bit of skank. Being an aficionado of skank Ms. White clearly understands if you’re designing a wedding scent a little skank goes a long way. This must have been communicated to M. Dubrana and so he uses licorice and carrot to attenuate the skank and accentuate the sweet floral quality of the jasmine absolutes. The carrot really adds a different foundation to a very familiar floral note. It takes a bit of vegetal sweetness as a polychromatic chord to the floral octave of jasmine. All together it takes what could have been a beastly jasmine and converts it into a domesticated kitten. The soft jasmine is turned softly animalic for the final part of the development by myrrh and hyraceum. The hyraceum adds in the animalic and the myrrh adds subdued sweetness. This accord is the return of the skank but as earlier kept on a very tight leash.  

Surrender has 6-8 hour longevity and moderate sillage.

abdessalaam attar dominique dubrana

Dominique Dubrana aka AbdesSalaam Attar

According to the press release Cold Water Canyon was inspired by a friend’s request for the scent of a summer canyon. Ms. Lawler and Ms. White asked M. Dubrana to create a green foundation for a more delicate jasmine to float upon. M. Dubrana uses a set of notes indigenous to canyons you might find in the American Southwest.

M. Dubrana opens on a dusty desiccated sage as the wind blows down the canyon. The pine trees upon the sides release their scent as the breeze inverts and blows through them. As you pass through the foliage in the base of the canyon a green leafy accord mixes with all of this. The early moments of Cold Water Canyon are very green with the sage, pine, and leafy notes all mixing together in a verdant chorus. After a few minutes as the sun sets and the stars come out so does the delicate smell of the night-blooming jasmine. Unlike in Surrender this jasmine carries a much more transparent feel to it. There is almost nothing indolic and it is nearly entirely the narcotic sweetness of jasmine. It is exactly the right contrast to the green accord on top. As you drift to sleep looking at the Milky Way above you in the canyon, Cold Water Canyon stays precisely poised between both aspects of the floral and green.

Cold Water Canyon has 4-6 hour longevity and average sillage.

Both of these perfumes show a real collaborative effort between Ms. Lawler, Ms. White, and M. Dubrana. They succeed because I imagine each of them was able to impose a bit of their own aesthetic upon both perfumes. While I am still firmly in the camp of not ever wanting to make my own fragrance it is a real pleasure to see when others take that step and succeed as well as this creative team has.

Disclosure: This review was based on samples provided by Surrender to Chance.

–Mark Behnke