Marula Amarula

2009 Couldn't resist a bottle on an end-aisle ... having read Lyall Watson's writing on the plant - what would it taste like?  

Amarula a cream liqueur with an elephant with tusks on the label: this natural liqueur is produced from the unique fruit of the marula tree and fresh cream; product of South Africa.

I find it has a slight citrusy tang and creamy vanilla blend.

In an article perfumer Vedat Ozan sent to me at the end of 2009 on Upcoming Flavors marula is listed ...

click here and scroll down  see animals enjoy the fermented fruit

 












Was the BBC documentary of animals getting "high" once a year with the marula tree's fermented fruit monkied with?
I have no idea other than Amarula didn't have that effect on me ... for better or worse 

photo: Marula tree and fruit, Transvaal, South Africa by Rotational

Grapefruit & Muguet

Vedat Ozan, perfumer in Istanbul, now offers various scent accords click here.

These allow you to play not only with single notes but with accords, at a good price.

The other day, while looking for a spritz of grapefruit and unable to locate the effervescent Ananas Fizz, or Vedat's grapefruit, I found instead, Vedat's Muguet.

Over it I sprayed Pamplelune/Guerlain Aqua Allegoria, a grapefruit fantasy.

This instinct turned out to be true. 

Pamplelune, many agree, is a strange scent. For me, it has always had a scratchiness to it. There was only one fellow, I worked with in a fragrance boutique, where it really shone its colors, straight out of the bottle. On him, it is magic.

Learning long ago not to think it sacrilegious to mix fragrances, no offense to perfumers, but after all, I mix paints, and mix ingredients to create new recipes ...

This underlayering of Ozan's Muguet immediately rounds out the scratch in Pamplelune's sulphurous undertone. This blending brings up and rounds out the sparkle, soothes the sharp. It also gives me more opportunity to wear Pamplelune whereas previously I wore it only when I needed odd, or to try it on someone else's skin.

Perfumers still find Muguet/Lily of the Valley a tricky one to capture, and as with rose, you will find numerous variations-on-a-theme available for your smelling pleasure. 

photo: Grapefruit Lura Astor

smile of roses

The scent of roses
has a smile on its face.

- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
German physicist, author 1742-1799

For me, the hardest is the rose to put in a bottle.
I sniff many fantasy roses, but never a real one in the juice. They mostly smell like the rose oil, not as the rose itself.

- Vedat Ozan perfumer





photo: Lura Astor

Scented Scrabble

Koku
the radio show
on everything scent, smell, odour, spice, perfume, perfumers, history


by host and perfumer
Vedat Ozan
becoming available online hereand Koku @ Açık Radyo is on Facebook



here, facebook page, including recent Harpers Bazaar spread
here
Listen, also here
Read here

















photos:
Scented Scrabble: by Lura Astor
Perfumer Vedat Ozan: by Serkan Eldeleklioglu

Kookoo for Koku

Koku, translates to English from Turkish as
odor/scent,
mentioned
in a previous post
Vedat Ozan's smell/scent radio show.

Not speaking Turkish, for me the sound koku evokes the cooing of morning doves or pigeons, which I find lovely.

 

Here a current article on perfumer, photographer, radio show host of Koku Vedat Ozan, as the title says, the man who beautifies his life with photography and smell.
Vedat Ozan's photography here and here The perfumes I have smelled to date are divine, fun, bracing,sensuous and other adjectives depending on the one.

The title Kookoo for Kokuechoes the sillily sung tagline for Cocoa Puffs cereal, repeated by the mascot coocoo bird. Actually it was as catchy as the idea of having a chocolate breakfast cereal. In my family we kids weren't allowed to have its sugars, so of course I got it "bootleg" from a neighbor or snuck it somehow, fascinated with how the milk became chocolatey brown.

So coocoo or kookoo, obsession comes up among the perfume/scent/olfaction crowd.

"Until you dream it," used to be the training ... whatever you were studying, a different language, choreography, a new topic, music, software, recipes. It was not merely eat, sleep, read, talk, live it ... you had to dream it. When young, overhearing my ballet teacher from France saying, I knew I had the language (English) once I was dreaming it, left an impression, as well as a memory every time I dreamed something I was learning - both in waking life - and learning in dreaming life.

Obsession. I am not talking about having to wash your hands 50 times before you can proceed to the next square of your move, trying to control life, but, you may try something 50 times, sketch it 50+ times, play with the variations 100's of times because you know you are working towards it, you are making yourself available for it to get you! Thus the practice of practice. With practice the form emerges.

Outside my prior journalistic purview, people sometimes stop mid-conversation and say, but I don't want to bore you with my rambling, I could go on forever about (geology, star formation, nanos, music, movies ...). It is there where the gems are. When people get onto the topic of their passion, if they have a passion, I hope they have a pash, a light lights up behind the eyes, the voice ignites lyrically playing through accent and dialect. On that bubble you can just take a ride around the world they're sharing.

To speak the language of koku is a gift
and I love all those who can speak it with me
we cross boundaries of land, language and time
for, the magic in the bottles and books still talks
long after its author is gone
















photo: Silver Lunar Landscape Cactii Lura Astor
Illustration:  Femme Lura Astor (original fragrance by Edmond Roudnitska for Rochas (and his wife Therese)

Vedat Ozan and Smiling Passport Stampers

Perfumer Vedat Ozan, of Istanbul, Turkey was interviewed click here on Carmel Perfumer's October 2009 postsI love Ozan's quote:
"On my trips, I always spend a lot of time in duty free aisles, spraying this or that to myself, my shirt and even my passport.

I will never forget the passport officer lady in the Malpensa Airport in Milan who opened the pages, closed her eyes, inhaled deeply and stamped my passport with a smile."

Video interview in Turkish here and written Hurriyet interview

Ozan has a weekly radio show discussing all facets of scent, odor, olfaction, perfume, and fragrance, including interviews, history and more ... koku and you can find him on TED.
this one discusses Coty, in Turkish.

I've had the chance to enjoy a selection of Vedat Ozan's creations. He is an artist. I was tickled to smell some truly enjoyable fumes, especially since it's been awhile since I got inspired on the sniff.

Not only are his works lovely, they have the added benefit of making me feel really good. Now, this is an indefinable I've been trying to define ... what makes one experience the feeling with a scent of just feeling good, more so than before wearing the scent? The perfume's aura merges with one's own personal space, and there you are ... different for it, moving within it as a cocoon carriage. It is not a static experience of the world.

With some of Ozan's work my wrist and nose kept in continual contact, a yakkity yakkity nasal conversation. As I slowly gain recognition, over the years, of certain perfumer's signatures evident in their work, with Vedat Ozan's perfumes I often get a distinct, dimensional, globe of soft glow that interacts.

Not woo woo but sniff ahhhh ! ~LA
watercolor: lastor