The Last Vestiges (ROUND 4)
scent of the day: Oqachol, by Prin
metallic opening of secretions magnifique at least in overlay and then a cola sweetness of frankinscence comes out. / sweet salty musk and ambergris duo with prin spice incense/ spice is not pungent though, it is folded in to other elements./ spices are more like spiced tobacco/ watery-salt vibes from seaweed/dirty peach skin osmanthus suede /the musk presence is crazy, i can tell. but im blind to it a bit . maybe but nature or because i used bleach yesterday/ standard safe drydown—not as exciting as other prins like Nisatiruk (one, therefore, Ramsey might liek much more).
Subtle but persistent fruity tobacco, perhaps—like Sir Winston—from the salty-sweet ambergris / smokey suede base that seems like it is an osmanthus incense / the drydown is more of that leathery base we get in Varuek and others (albeit here with a bit more of an Anubis tilt and less castoreum centered) / Prin is so good, he is the ceiling of intensity for me so far but the main objection that keeps him from master perfumer status is that there is so much overlap in his fragrances / from this ceiling I almost want to go back into the vintage classics to see some of the real work from master perfumers we went to school and apprenticed / and it makes me wish some of these great artists (and even someone like Cecile Zarokian) would do if they had unadulterated access tot eh exotic ingredients I get in Prin /
I find little reason to go much further down the artisanal rabbit hole (especially those houses that just reek of all-too-white-person-septum-ring-and-scarf performative allyship)/ Some brands like Ensar and Sherwood speak to me, but I am both experienced enough and wise enough to know not only of the diminishing returns at this upper level but that getting into Elkhaldi and Agur Aura or even the tremendous and underappreciated Amphora (one of the few brands not lying about being all natural) and all the rest is less about filling a hole in quality or depth or artistry and more about pushing into micro-niche experiences—like going from drinking a variety of great wines to obsessing over single-vineyard Burgundy / this is expecially true when you have tremendous brands out there like Papillion and Olympic Orchids and Parfums D’Empire whose pricing is extremely low for the skill shown /
Anyway, Oqachol is salty sweet (think: Trinidadian tamarind) with a little soapy powdery (of Mandarava) among insane animalics and aggression/ likely one spray is all one needs—two might have bombed me out even though I sprayed, as everyone should, outside/ oqachol might be the best opening out of every prin and perhaps in my whole collection (although Oud Loukoum and Lao oud are pretty high) / But this is severely blinding: Prin uses powerful synthetics / I will the overindulgent opening stayed—it turns many off but that is where I wish this fragrance would stay (if only for fifteen minutes more) /
Again, I get the same old overdone spice accord though: it is crazy good but in nearly every damn scent /cola incense plus carbolic oud or cypriol comes out to make a lovely pipe tobacco accord, particularly one that has (1) been aged near the sea in the open air sun (like latakia tobacco) and (2) has been fire cured into a leatheriness, also like latakia, over coniferwood aromatics (here I get pine and juniper especially, in what makes for a solid connection to Papillon’s Spell 125 and Pinewards Brokilan and both of Prin’s Mrigas) and (3) has a malty or baked-bread quality like we get sometimes from the natural fermentation or from tobaccos processed with a whiskey casing that imparts and oaky quality /it is very nice /real musk and real ambergris create a crazy cloud, especiually with synthetics / dirty suede osmanthus, chewy and reminiscent of Montabacco, works with the antiseptic-like cypriol to make the tobacco leathery / frankinscence-cola stays strong / Keemun tea note gives a malty vibe
wow drydown is very unique and rich and nuanced, one could get—especially when in the thrall of the marketing copy’s ocean-wave narrative—impressions of brown scum (kelp and algae) left behind on beach from receding tide / one does get a savory and oceanic umami largely from the combo of ambergris and Choya Nakh, a distillation of toasted sea-mollusk shells and sandalwood that connects this fragrance to TSVGA releases (especially, given the bvirch tar and cade here, to TSVGAs like Vicki-Lin)
Maybe I am too much in thrall of the markettign copy but I can see the beashc wave aspect here. But I mean int eh briny eathy sense of the tide residue instead of the water itself. / Here are some ways to describe it: sea foam, Spume, surf foam, Scum, Marine foam, Slimy tideline, Mermaid’s cappuccino, Beachy bog-snot, or as I put it elsewhere: the surf-snot scum, the mermaid-cappuccino froth, of a sewage beach’s animal fertilizer tideline.
The Last Vestiges
Happy Meal box battered (fries stiff, having clocked a night’s share of miles), the meth-mouth mom sighs then whirlwinds (“Heyyy!”) into her childhood home post morning rush—scooping up the TVed toddler in a centrifugal hug. Unlike that stench exaggerated by curbside Febreze, that ebullience exaggerated by curbside mascara (and a toke in the mirror) wilts in on itself. More cash must be coaxed out of Granny.
She does that teen sway of one leg behind the other— a man, smoking near the car, framed in the window. Too fast the day approaches when—against the fixity of that contagious killer stench—the transience of that contagious killer ebullience will flare so bright that the boy, his fingers fretting the toy’s contours, will understand the necessity of becoming immune to hope at a level of consciousness before his time.
