Review of Siberian Snow by aad de gids

notes of 'siberian snow' on the DS&Durga website: "TOP NOTES.wintergreen mint.cistus labdanum.incense HEART NOTES. styrax.jasmine sambac.patchouli BASE NOTES.amber.civet.opoponax" everything you say about this perfume could just as easily immediately be withdrawn also because it is capricious in the notes it promotes and athmospheres suddenly thrown in and back. it started so demure and already the patch I spritzed is bombarding me with harsher and sharper notes. yet I have learned to love this perfume through and through. the perfume which has such beautiful accompanying narrative at "Lucky Scent": "In a gauzy room is a cedar marriage kist, loved and serene, hand-painted with faded lover's cups, keys, hearts, trees and entwined initials. The lid opens with a whoosh of camphor, minted air and powder from garments folded away with the duck-egg blues and blush of heirloom comforters. The ornate scent of pomanders and dried flowers permeates the wood and layers of lining paper, crisp and failing under careful fingers. As you lift the trousseau and inhale, the scent of a hundred dazzling balls comes waltzing back to life; perfume and sweet smoke, flushed skin and a sense of tomorrows never dawning." this is also not a linear, systematically developing perfume as it is facetory, diamanté. another key word to describe this mysterious perfume was also offered by Lucky Scent: "haunting". my experience of the perfume actually started with the narrative and the possession of the flacon (plus also, narrative) of "Burning Barbershop". then it is further up to ones own personal tastes which of the iconic perfumes appeals most to personal preferences. well it then was this one. if there is a linear development in the emanating notes of the perfume it is that it keeps becoming more mysterious (as also: dense and dark). a 'prismatic' scent with enough poise for us to throw our Russian contessa to the fore, entertaining fromout of her Dasha. what most reviewers here say: we smell the amber, true but it is a 'safran troublant' so an almost accusatory amber. the labdanum is evident and much similar to leLabos "Labdanum18". now and then in the beginning I got whiffs of pleasant mint. the resinoid character of this perfume suffuses gradually with styrax, incense and a refined civet. it will often be a jasmine (or rose) that makes a great flowery accent as is here also perfectly the case and then the perfume "turns" again (indeed also playing with the doubleness of this term) to show another chimaera, a shadow on the inertness of diaphanous siberian snow. within these moodswings a strong iconologic emblem nevertheless, as civet, opoponax and incense deliver real timereleased olphactoric consistency yesterday lasting 6++ hours several times. as one then also get previous aspects with newly awoken notes the mystery lasts. an anisic mint gets revived again. we revel in a forgotten past wafted to us by those thinnest folding papers as haunting as intruiguing. this all, to also attest to the 'fact' that the art of perfumery has more to do with alchemy and magic, intuition and sensibility as (also but considerably less) with marketing and saleslogistics, 'public taste' and plastic. Durga (art) and Moltz (perfumery) stand for a magnificent 'team' to create wonderful perfumes and that they fit in a nichiste world of perfumes, give this specific world a higher cachet alltogether. same could be said of 'Parfums Dusita' and 'Vero.Profumo' allbeit again in entirely different regions. that 'Siberian Snow' gives leeway to such ponderings again attests back to the veritable mystique ways of its notes, narrative, sheer unpredictability and yet strong embossment of identity (Russian-New York). and this from an authentic 80s reveler of poison-giorgio-obsession-knowing-coco-nahema-gem.