Mirage Attar by Alexandre Helwani
It was my luck to spend a few days at The Rising Phoenix Perfumery during my tour of the United States. Few days lost in time, locked in a 19th century lodge amidst woods awash in copper light – for it was during the Indian Summer. Few days smelling enchanting woods, discovering oils like treasures lost in ruins for JK -as goes Joseph DeLapp, The Rising Phoenix’s perfumer and founder- is a mad archaeologist of scents. There I smelt vintage Coty and vintage sandalwood, roses from Taif and Medina, ouds both Cambodi and Kyara and burnt more than my flat’s worth of precious bark. And so it came that as I rampaged through his materials each more precious than the other, I stumbled upon a phial full of his latest creation Mirage Attar.
Unwary I touched Mirage Attar first and I reeled in wonder as my fingertips gleamed with perfume – a smell of jasmine suddenly bloomed and came about my nose like a drop of ink as it expands in clear waters but I did not know what it was I smelt. Yet so this fragrance haunted me and I found myself nagging the man, asking him if there was Jasmine in each of the perfumes I would try.
There was a night. There was a morning.
The next day rose and I crawled in his incensed lair until I opened again the bottle of Mirage Attar – and marveled, oh, I marveled indeed for not only did the sun rise, but the intoxicating smell of jasmine blooms.
Desert Dawn by Anthony Tuil on Unsplash
And it came to me – the vision of an oasis in the shade of palm trees just ere the hour of sundawn. Red terracotta walls, trees and flowers in shade of mauve and grey, dunes whizzing and singing as winds ruffle through the leaves. Being there alone and standing still as if into a verse of poetry, in a world of murmurs and supernatural colours. Dates ripen on their yellowed boughs; fountains silence the chirping of birds as camels sleep by the fire under skies so dark one could toy with them. Being there alone and standing still before the breaking of the world in a land sung in myths which felled the greatest armies.
Being there.
Alone.
Standing still.
In the last homely place before the void where Pharaohs lie buried.
Mirage is not a jasmine bomb. It is jasmine breathing.
Here somehow devoid of animality, the white blossoms are become feverish, truly narcotic, capturing one’s senses as time flies, opening up one’s third eye until one falls at last into a dimension hidden from plain sight. There are though no artifices – the minty Omani frankincense brings light and air to the usually hefty bloom, giving an impression of clear water gushing through the oasis. Acidulous almost, it blends with the Sandalwood to create a dry and ethereal background on which the jasmines twirl.
Oasis by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash
Flowers from all paths unfold into one: the dirty sambac, ashy tunes auriculatum along with the indolic grandiflorum paint a kaleidoscopic image where white petals blur into a pool of indigo. Mirage for this flower is unreal, Mirage for this feels more like a dream, Mirage for this attar stands on the verge of madness. Madness of choosing ingredients that collide in the hope they’ll combine. The darkest of Oud and the whitest of blooms; bolts of rosewood and strikes of luban, all come to brush softened tunes of nightshade.
The cold dewdrops heat up and turn to a mist, the jasmine comes ablaze under the rising sun and the Olibanum, transparent, starts to shine. It leaves afar its citrus cloak and shows off a crushed resinous edge – the dust of sand rolling down the dunes.
Mirage Attar’s brilliance comes down to a minimalistic writing arched over exceptionally high-quality materials. An architecture borrowed from traditional attars weaves in Japanese motifs under a Western eye. When East meets West,
Dunes by Magnezis Magnestic on Unsplash
Impossibly pure, formidable dizziness of warped atmospheres, Mirage is the sullen place when, drifting into dreams, all fantasies come true.
– Alexandre Helwani, Contributor
Alexandre and JK DeLapp (read his profile in American Perfumery here) photo via JK
Thanks to the generosity of Joseph DeLapp of The Rising Phoenix Perfumery we have two 1ml bottle of Mirage Attar for two registered readers, one in the USA and one anywhere in the world (register here) and leave a comment with what you enjoyed about Alexandre’s review of The Rising Phoenix Perfumery’s Mirage Attar and where you live. Draw closes 1/17/2020
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