This is a review of a 1970s (orange chevron) bottle of EDT.
Magie Noire is amazing. Incredible to have the experience of vintage tenacity. We get used to perfumes that come and go in a few hours, but Magie Noire has been on my arm for 10 hours. Ten! And is still going strong. The only other thing I have that does that is vintage Coco. ETA: stayed with me for 12 full hours.
It's addictive. It is animalic, that's true - the civet is alive and well, if that even IS civet (castoreum?) but it's nothing like anything else I've smelled. I'm sort of ensorcelled by it. It's incredibly magnetic, earthy, and there's animal musk but it's so rich and *different* from human smells, nobody could say it's a no-panties situation. It's more like you might be a kitsune, one of the mythical Japanese fairytale creatures - a fox that shapeshifts into a woman and back again. It's not animalic in a bathroom/bedroom way, it's wild fur over warm skin.
It also feels like slipping on a $600 silk negligee and a pair of sky-high heels to answer a knock at a hotel door. It's really super, super sexy. And I am not a fan of calling perfumes "sexy" - people are sexy, perfume is not sexy. Perfume can be part of the overall package, but a sexy woman is going to be sexy without perfume, and an unsexy woman is not going to be sexy just because she puts some on. That's the simple truth of it.
Well, but... This perfume is sexy. Holy moly. I feel secretive and decadent and a little wistful that I don't have the life to go with this perfume. Sitting here in the olfactory equivalent of a silk negligee and sky-high nude Loubies with a stack of papers to grade. This perfume is a little dangerous. The drydown... Is just. So. Rowrr...
And here's the weirdest part: I don't really like the smell of it that much. All of the above is true. And I don't really like it that much? Compulsion. Aversion. Compulsion. Aversion. It really does weird things to me. And yes, that's alluring in a way... But scary.
I can't, I shouldn't, I couldn't, I wouldn't, I would never: and then you do.
And that's amazing, but it's also awful.
ETA: I finally figured out that this (again, 1970s, chevron cap, EDT) smells very, very much like Guerlain Encens Mythique minus the about 50% of the rose. There has to be ambergris in here. Encens Mythique also gives me a down-the-rabbit-hole experience, a feeling of weird past-life deja vu. It's beautiful and it's sad, and it's beautiful because it's so sad. Delicate, gothic, fey, slightly unreal.
Wearable? Hm.
Addictive? Yes.
Edited to add: Day 2 of testing Magie Noire. Still bewitching. It makes me want to write a novel. About someone mysterious but reassuring. The more I think about this perfume, the more I try to understand it and read it, the more it has to say. This is not hyperbole. It feels like a doorway. It feels like the wardrobe that leads into Narnia. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this. Pursue the notes, pursue this odd kind of shapeshifting animal to see if it has relatives, dive down the vintage rabbit-hole, or just stay right here and say: this is where I want to be.
I think I will try to get that Russian perfume votes say is similar. And I've ordered a bottle of Avon Occur! because the woman who swapped this to me has many wonderful things to say about it, and she has fantastic taste.
Still, I'd like to explore this across the decades. If you have some to swap, please check my notepad and see if there's anything you'd like to trade for.
Apr
23
2015
Télécharger OR http://bit.ly/ExaM1
Télécharger OR http://bit.ly/ExaM1
