Parfumeurs du Monde Ujan by Alexandre Helwani
To visit one jungle is to visit them all and though they may all be different, yet so they beat -hot or cold- with the same rhythm of the Earth, the same clamour in the trees, the same dampness on the leaves. Be it deep in the Mekong delta or lost in the heights of Ireland, there is always this same sense of jolting life and secrecy, this feeling of stumbling as if per chance on nature’s reliquary. Silence beams and one stands still, feeling like a stranger in another world. To visit a jungle is to visit them all for all make us realise that we are here, amidst nature, like a passerby. And there are sensations to them that one could not find elsewhere; and colours too. To be entrapped or enshrined in hues of green and jade and emerald leaves and breathe deeply ‘neath the canopy that dims the sunlight. To hear the birds singing and a rattling through fallen limbs, the creaking of rotting boughs covered in fern of copper and of gold. All life is there awash in evergreen dew, a synaesthetic choir of sounds and shades – psychedelic. I know jungles enough to recognise them as I go. I have seen the misty mountains of the Bourbon Isle and walked deep through the greens of the Mekong banks. I know the damp air, I know the short breath, I know the swelling of scent, the plumpness of fruits and this feeling of having stepped into the Garden of Eden.
Lickeenwood by Alexandre Helwani
If you don’t know perfumer Thierry Bernard, then one cannot fully understand the renewal of natural perfumery. If one knows not of this adventurer, then one knows not about the treasures of this Earth for, having met him, I can say this – that I have never met a perfumer with such love, not of raw materials, but of the nature that brings them to be, a crazy man running from an edge to the other of the world, swimming with crocodiles and singing with orangutans. Ujan is the scent of renewal, of the a rising sun, a sullen flow of energy -liquid fire- burrowing its way through the festering torpour of our time.
The opening is surprising, unknown yet foreseen. The mandora comes sweet and juicy, a beam of light piercing through high branches and through leaves of an unfamiliar oil katafray whose woody-leafy tones paint a realistic picture of the Malgache jungle. The crocodile Oud swiftly shows its face, its dryness set against a backdrop of blackcurrant buds. From then on, it is a play in contrasts, as is the light in such places, hiding here and striking there, revealing faces carven in the woods, shapes hidden over limbs and eyes of the forests. Contrasts of orange and of night, of dark and of light, Ujan manages not to transport you to the jungle of Madagascar nor to that of Borneo but rather through this feeling, this eerie uneasiness of being, for once, not much at home nor more on Earth.
Copper moss by Alexandre Helwani
A magical scent which slowly unfolds like the sight that eases into the darkness over time, Parfumeurs du Monde Ujan subtly reveals its heart of ouds: green ouds, watery ouds, moldy ouds and dry. Thierry Bernard chose not to follow the craze and trend and went rather for the humble ouds, the ones that get no attention for not being so rare yet so they are for none ever uses them in perfumes and seldom in such an honourable way. This is the greatness of Thierry Bernard : not to worship a material but the land that brought it to life. The floral bouquet of rose and jasmine is crisp enough not to burden the lightness of the foliage above – jasmine’s indole serves right the dirtiness of the oud whilst rose and neroli flutter like feather over the berry’s fruitiness. A resinous drydown of boozy Myrrh and sensual benzoin tempers the harshness of an otherwise bichromatic oud.
Twisted bark by Alexandre Helwani
Ujan is not as much the watchful spirit of the forest than the shout of nature itself. A visceral cry rising from mangroves and jungles South and North, a cry for life, a power that kept it through frost and fires and through all the strikes of time. Parfumeurs du Monde Ujan is the roar that lives within all trees, the tears shed by all flora, the blood shed by the fauna. Ujan is the symbol of the unstoppable wheel of our doom and the doom of our land. It honours it and from the belittled trees and flowers, Thierry Bernard has created a marvel.
Thierry Bernard of Parfumeurs du Monde
For me, Thierry is one of the greatest natural perfumers for he knows nature, he speaks with it, he cries with it and rather than bleeding it for the last drop of a material and adding to a craze that will bring nature to its end, Thierry shows nature’s wonders and comely songs…
Disclaimer – This review was based on a bottle provided by Thierry Bernard. All opinions are my own.
– Alexandre Helwani, Contributor
Thanks to the generosity of Thierry Bernard and Parfumeurs du Monde we have a 30ml bottle of Parfumeurs du Monde Ujan for a registered reader in the USA or EU (you have to do this folks here) and leave a comment with what you enjoyed about Alexandre’s review of Parfumeurs du Monde Ujan and where you live. Draw closes December 16, 2019
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