Persolaise Review: Solar’1 from Jazmin Saraï (Dana El-Masri; 2015)

The soundbites
If Solar’1 were a colour, it would be burnished gold.
If it were a poem, it would be Ozymandias by P B Shelley.
If it were a texture, it would be dense, warm olive oil.

The review
You become a bit blasé about independent scent houses, complaining that they’re re-hashing familiar ideas. But then you smell a vial of cynical crud from a ‘designer’ brand, and you’re suddenly reminded that old ideas, if they’re well-executed, are unquestionably preferable to some of the nonsense that passes for perfumery in this day and age. Enter: Solar’1, the latest release from Canada’s Jazmin Saraï. Perfumer (and founder) Dana El-Masri suggests the scent ought to be paired with D’Angelo’s Africa, but I sense something more primal at work here. Full of the sorts of resins and unguents one could imagine in the air at an Egyptian embalming ceremony, Solar’1 dances to the sound of an ancient drum, whirling the darkest, smokiest elements of labdanum, cocoa, osmanthus and castoreum into a moonlit brew. What’s most remarkable is that none of it ever feels heavy, so although it bears more than a passing resemblance to the likes of, say, Nanban from Arquiste, it doesn’t share those scents’ heavy-handedness or strident insistence. Commendable work.

[Review based on a sample of eau de parfum provided by Jazmin Saraï in 2016]

Persolaise