Photo by Pixaby

When I’m faced with the  image of loping giraffes silhouetted against low-hanging cumulus clouds at dusk, the savanna spread out before it like an ever-burgeoning shadow –  I’m fairly helpless to resist. Such is the power of the camera’s eloquent eye. No less potent is the written word, and brilliant copy writing is surely an underrated art form, an alchemical wordsmithery all its own. Allusion to dreamers, fevered imaginings, love of adventure, travel, mystery, stillness, crepuscular constellation-gazing, one’s “nose to the wind” – is captivating.

Beryl Markham’s novel Circling the Sun by Paula McLain from Town and Country Magazine (left to right: Beryl Markham, Denys Finch-Hatton, Karen Blixen)

This is where copy and I part ways. I relish being bathed in brilliant imagery Moon Fever however, for me – bears little resemblance to its description.  I feel it quite differently: it’s one of the best concentrated eau de colognes to come down the pike, bedded in tonka and vetiver and garnished with lashings of leather. Memo Paris Moon Fever teeters on fougère territory as it dries down, dulcetly barbershoppy in its appeal. The citruses are out of this world – delectable, mouthwatering, premium quality. They tell me of another tale recounted under African skies.

Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen and Robert Redford as Denys Finch Hutton (from Out of Africa 1985)

Consider Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962), the famous Danish author better known as Isak Dinesen. If ever anyone was predisposed to tragic attachments and convoluted gothic tales, it was Karen Blixen. She was to be forever haunted by her father’s love of nature, the hunt AND his return home from a sojourn with the Wisconsin Chippewa carrying syphilis. Guilt over his infidelities compounded by siring a child with the household maid resulted in his suicide when she was nine. An ill-fated marriage to Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke scarcely fared better; he too was unfaithful and infected her with syphilis – but it did land her in Kenya where they tried to raise coffee (unsuccessfully) and she encountered the love of her life, Denys Finch-Hatton.  Denys was a known adventurer (read unfaithful encore) and big game hunter who ran safari for the well-heeled; Karen’s years in Africa lodged deep beneath her skin, as evidenced in perhaps her best publicized book Out of Africa. How do Isak Dinesen, Denys Finch-Hatton and Memo Moon Fever intertwine in all this, you rightly inquire? One word: elegance.

Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen

The well-educated Europeans who thronged to Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century in hopes of seeking/making/restoring their fortune were impossibly elegant: they could afford to be. What refreshes in extreme aridity and humidity alike? Eau de Cologne and plenty of it. We are not conjuring the expanse of the veldt, the animalic pungency which signals the presence of wild creatures in situ.

Karen Blixen 1959 photo by Carl Van Vechten

Not the mountains, waterfalls, plains, flora or fauna. Memo Paris Moon Fever regales us with that scented scrap of civilization to which transplanted Europeans clung – dusty, dehydrated, world-weary and completely unused to the African continent’s climate and custom. Many brought their gin and scotch, creature comforts such as they were – but eau de cologne was ‘the other form of liquid refreshment’, doused liberally when one felt faint or depleted. Moon Fever would have fit the bill admirably: it opens with the most beautiful notes, puissant, sparking citrus with orange blossom to temper them. The leathery evocation of travel trunks and safari satchel appointments is a relatively subtle one as it melds with a choice vetiver and the more herbal/ambery tones of clary sage, delightful tonka. Moon Fever hovers whisperingly above heated flesh, renewing itself with continued perspiration; it grants the simulation of elegance amidst woefully rumpled linens (which are cooling but look rather the worse for wear after a while) and flagging spirits. What becomes a legend? An exquisite eau de cologne, always – and Memo Paris Moon Fever, an eau de parfum – is among the most intense versions of a classic which never loses its lustre.

Notes: Oil of bitter orange, oil of grapefruit, oil of primofiore lemon, neroli blossom absolute, clary sage absolute, oil of verbena, oil of vetiver, leather accord, tonka bean absolute

Tester of Memo Paris Moon Fever provided by Europerfumes – many thanks! My nose is my own…

photo abesbook.com

~ Ida Meister, Senior Editor and Natural Perfumery Editor whose inspiration was the book written in 1937, not the movie  (Michelyn for Art Direction)

Clara Molloy of Memo Paris was featured in our Creative Directors in Perfumery series here

photo via Memo Paris

Thanks to the largesse of Europerfumes, we have a 75 ml tester bottle of Memo Paris Moon Fever for one registered reader in the USA ONLY. You must register here or your comment will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what you enjoyed most about Ida’s review of Memo Paris Moon Fever and if you ever have read the book or seen the movie Out of Africa. Draw closes 8/21/2019

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