Have you ever read a review of something — a movie, a car, an art show, a fragrance — and thought to yourself, “A-ha! That’s exactly what I was thinking . . . without even realizing I was thinking it!”
That’s how I felt when I read the Perfume Posse review for Liz Zorn’s Oudh Lacquer. Besides being a rather poignant glimpse into the author’s own life and mind, the review focused on the one thing I’ve found most true while wearing Oudh Lacquer daily for the past two weeks — comfort.
I’ve Always Been Afraid of Edges: “Some perfumes are all edge and make me feel really uncomfortable – they seem foreign and strange, not particularly pleasant . . . (but Oudh Lacquer) goes on so sharp and clear about what it is, with an earthy quality, surrounded by leather, and then just when you are standing on the edge looking over, trying to calm your breathing with this racy, full-throated scent, you get chocolate, florals, spices and, can it be? Comfort.”
What made the review even more pointed for me was its timing. I was having one of those peculiar days where nothing goes quite right: the morning alarm didn’t wake me up; we were out of milk; I dropped my coffee cup and it shattered into the tiniest pieces across the kitchen floor. As I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and began hunting down what seemed like an infinity of shards, a host of petty frustrations started to well up inside of me and that’s when it hit me, literally right in the face — a waft of soft, dark cocoa and spices buffed into a smooth polish over a warm base of woods and smoke.
My frustrations went *poof* right then, right there, and I almost laughed at how effectively Zorn’s Oudh Lacquer blend just ripped the rug right out from under my Bad Mood Rising.
When I first wrote about Zorn’s Oudh Lacquer on September 21st, I said that I needed more time with it than just the few days the original sample allowed: “A couple of days just doesn’t seem enough to get at the truth of a fragrance anymore — I mean, we’ve developed a glancing acquaintance and all that, but I’m ordering a bottle tonight and will report back in a few weeks after I’ve had the opportunity to take it out to dinner, watch some movies, go shopping together, drink a couple of bottles of great wine and maybe watch a few sunsets, sharing a bench on the rooftop deck.”
Well, I’ve now had a couple of weeks, and I’ve taken Oudh Lacquer shopping, worn it while running errands, we’ve cooked dinner together, huffed away on the treadmill, and I even brought it with me as I tapped away on my computer in the coffee shop down the street. My main impression from all of this has been exactly what Patty summarized in that one perfect word: comfort.
In case anyone’s feeling apprehensive about it being an oud, I made certain to deliberately apply far more than anyone in his/her right mind would think was optimal, yet no matter how much I put on, Oudh Lacquer wore very closely, remaining non-intrusive to any bystanders while functioning as a warm and utterly sanguine backdrop to all my activities.
Like my own private soundtrack . . . that I could smell!
***Note: the word ‘sanguine’ refers not only to a confident, optimistic outlook, but also to “a reddish, often tending to brown, color of chalk used in drawing” that results in an earthy, rustic effect. “Confident” and “rustic” both work as descriptors for Oudh Lacquer.
As I mentioned in my previous trial review, Oudh Lacquer possesses excellent longevity, and it’s a woodsy, cocoa dusted, incense-smoke veiled pleasure from start to finish. While Oudh Lacquer is not in any way a floral fragrance, there are hints of florals (orange blossom, rose, champaca) at the opening and mid-phases to assist the sugar and spice (honey, cocoa, cinnamon, clove) in softening what many consider to be oud’s sharper edges.
Oudh Lacquer is an all-natural fragrance (which means it contains actual agarwood oil, real champaca essence, genuine cocoa absolute, etc.), and is released under the ‘Soivohle Naturals’ designation in the Liz Zorn Perfumes brand. Zorn herself is an independent perfumer out of Ohio, and is (in my opinion) one of the best natural perfumers working today (though not every fragrance she creates is an all-natural).
***Note 2: If you’re looking for other excellent independent perfumers who work either somewhat or entirely with all-natural formulae, you might want to check out: Dawn Spencer Hurwitz out of Colorado (both all-natural and synthetic formulations); Ayala Moriel out of Vancouver, Canada (works exclusively with all-natural formulations); and AbdesSalaam Attar out of Monte Colombo, Italy (largely all-natural, but with a smattering of synthetic formulations).
