Mirage Group – Style

The associative series of “desert” aromas is sand, cacti, the night starry sky. “Kommersant Style” tells what fragrances you should look for such exotic and what they actually smell like.

The fragrances celebrating the romance of the deserts are released quite regularly: among those that are well-known, it is worth remembering the old releases, such as Maison Margiela with his Across Sands, Chloe with Nomade, DS & Durga with El Cosmico. But the champions of this kind of perfumery are niche oriental brands. For them, it is a natural habitat, and perfumers convey its sound with strong accents of oud wood combined with notes of amber and coriander. The desert seems like a pretty powerful source of creative ideas, but the mainstream stands for “warm, dry, mineral”—which is what perfumes that associate themselves with desert areas usually sound like. The more unexpected are plant notes of inclusions like cactus, dates, thorns. And although not all of us love the real desert, it will be interesting to make such an olfactory journey.

Irina Kirienko