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| A Deer Musk Pod |
Nicholas Nilsson knows that dedicated fragheads like samples. This fact is one that many niche brands have opted to ignore in recent years, as the economic wisdom of sending samples has been called into question by the millions who scratch and sniff, and then move on without buying. What Nilsson apparently knows better than his competitors is that potential customers who smell and move on are still potential customers, even if they wait a few weeks or months to purchase. So he wisely included in his sample package an upcoming perfume called Caravansary, which according to him is a work in progress, and slated for release this year.
The notes breakdown for Caravansary is as follows: fir balsam, deer musk, vanilla, black tea, lavender, blue spruce, blue chamomile, treemoss, incense, campfire smoke. I mention the list because I can smell most of these notes in play (minus the "blue" descriptors, which sound good but aren't relevant), and Caravansary is a perfume that evolves on skin over time to reveal different facets that are not obvious in the first five minutes, but become very obvious after five hours. It opens with a rather "pissy" terpenic pine accord of fir needles and sappy-resinous greens, with a soft lavender note holding the bitterness in check. Twenty minutes later a smooth vanilla note rises from the forest floor like a cool mist, adding a tempered sweetness to offset the angry woodiness at the start.
Eventually the fragrance becomes herbal, with hints of a tea note, a few drops of chamomile, and a smoky quality within the vanilla. Caravansary's magic unfolds at the ninety minute mark, when a novel deer musk accord takes shape. It smells like 3-methyl-1-cyclopentadecanone (laveo muscone), aka deer musk, and deer musk, real or synthetic, has more weight to the nose than smell. It is a heavy, acrid, powdery, animalic, and subtly sweet sensation that fills the lungs with every inhalation, and holds them open for an extra few seconds. Caravansary's base is a deer musk note with its hard edges of motor oil and dirty horse stall sanded into an eminently wearable and somewhat animalic sweetness, an extension of the vanilla that preceded it. Note to Nicholas -- don't be so polite! This is his Kouros, and it smells great, but the unrealized promise of its musk has me, pardon the pun, "pining" for more. Luckily, he has time to tinker.