Dark Moon (Holiday no.16)
DSH Perfumes (2016)

If Luca Turin were to give this scent his signature two-word review headline, it might be ‘chocolate smoke’. Picture a smear of molten dark chocolate buffed into a swirl of paper, incense, and centuries of dust. Dark Moon is by far my favorite DSH Perfumes gourmand because it is less straightforwardly edible and more atmospheric than most gourmand scents. Wearing it feels like letting a square of dark chocolate melt slowly in your mouth while sitting in a room where papiers d’armenie are being burned.

As I write, the weather in Ireland has turned wintry, which means that I begin my annual search for a chocolate bar that’s halfway between milk and dark, i.e., that mythical no-man’s land between punishingly black (my husband’s preference for 97% dark chocolate betraying Savonarola-level levels of austerity) and flabbily milky (low-brow stuff that’s more wax than cocoa). I haven’t found my happy medium in bar form yet, but man, does Dark Moon get me there in perfume form.

The opening feeds you all the velvety bitterness associated with 98% cocoa content chocolate, but none of its unpleasantly metallic or acidic facets. I think that the way Dawn has handed the crucial ‘mouthfeel’ element of the chocolate note is very clever; the scent’s richness and ‘thickness’ coming not from vanilla or cream fillers, but from a woody benzoin note that fluffs the chocolate note out with incense and paper. This has the effect of blending the chocolate out at the edges with a foundation brush, graduating from a molten brown center to a bone-pale powder at the outer corners.

There are lots of chypre and spicy-floral notes listed for Dark Moon, but my peasant nose picks up on none. Instead, once the chocolate has faded, it reminds me a little of the way Reve d’Ossian (Oriza L. Legrand) wears on the skin in the far drydown, to wit, thickly matted with smoky musks, amber, and wood for a texture that feels both rich and dry, almost hot to the touch. To my nose, this feels dusty rather than powdery, but I can see how people might interpret it as having a vintage vibe. I think of Reve d’Ossian as being the scent of ancient things – a priest’s vetements, old gowns, wooden pews, and so on – but not the scent of High Mass. DSH Perfumes Dark Moon has a similar approach, in that it smells of chocolate, but of an abstract chocolate diffused in a whir of smoke and paper, rather than something you’d actually eat. This abstraction elevates the chocolate note far beyond gourmandise, and lends it an aura of seductive mystery.

If I ever get around to compiling a list of my favorite gourmand scents, DSH Perfumes Dark Moon would certainly be on it. And for a person who often likes the idea of gourmands more than their actuality, that’s high praise.

Mortals have dreams of love's perfect schemes
But they don't realize that love will sometimes bring a
Dark moon, away up high up in the sky
Oh, tell me why, oh, tell me why you've lost your splendor...