Le Maroc pour Elle
Tauer (2005)

A beautiful and opulent Floral-Oriental perfume with a misleading name. Le Maroc Pour Elle does a "Portrait of a Lady" type of labeling when, in reality, it could easily pass as "Le Maroc Pour Lui."

Leaving the name aside, this is a beautiful Oriental treatment of Jasmine, the most prominent floral note, supported by Rose and Lavender. I love Jasmine in perfumes, but it has to be natural-smelling. I came to develop an aversion toward the Hedione built-up accords that saturate the market. Furthermore, it needs to be handled with care. Not too fruity, nor too rubbery or indolic. Yes, I am picky. Here, it is used exquisitely by a nose who has proved numerous times that he understands and appreciates floral materials and that he knows how to handle them. What he decides to do with the remainder of the composition might not always please my fancy, but I love the way he weaves it here (as well as in Une Rose Chypree).

The opening of Le Maroc is fizzy and bright due to the mandarin and the lavender. I find this sparkling opening prevalent in many of Andy Tauer's perfumes, and I am a fan. It is invigorating and different from the usual choice of introductory greetings most perfumers opt for. Jasmine enters the scene almost immediately, opulent and assertive with the right amount of indolic facets and sweetness, while nothing about it feels excessive. The lavender helps to balance the queen of the night until the rose and later, the woods and resins take the burden. You see, she is always restrained by the secondary players and never allowed to overshadow the composition. The rose is present but merely guards her, never crossing the line. The base of Le Maroc is creamy and woody. I get the cedar mostly, and thankfully, none of the Iso-E Super that prevents me from loving PHI Une Rose De Kandahar. Along the cedar, a melange of resins gives a hint of smokiness, sweetness, and a dusty texture. I would say the woods are more prevalent than the resins and almost give off an antique furniture vibe (or an apothecary).

Le Maroc Pour Elle makes me picture a well-kept flower garden in the Orient, maybe within the domain of a luxurious palace, a stroll through the garden at dusk when the flowers speak the loudest. I think men can easily enjoy this as the lavender gives off a nice fougerish touch in the opening that lasts through the heart, where the strong woody notes (mainly the cedar) take over. Don't judge by the name, but let your nose guide you.

IG:@memory.of.scents

Bulgarian rose, very strong and true, slightly incense-y. Lovely. Patchouli on the dry down is pronounced, but I don't care, even though I dislike patchouli unless it's very specifically blended. This smells like a magic shop. I did receive a sample from a swap that smelled more heavily patchouli and very skanky, and I disliked that one, so I'd say sample this before buying so you know which version you're getting.

I love this on me almost as much as I love it on my wife. It's beautiful. Watch out if you're wearing a white shirt though; this stuff stains.

Complex, deep and above all, exquisitely balanced floral oriental. Turin's three stars do it an injustice. This is a four star, at the very least. The impression for me is of jasmine, sandalwood (the real thing), amber, rose, plum, and (as everyone here notes), the sweet smell of head shop incense sticks.

It would certainly be attractive for women (this was Tauer's first scent and was initially labelled just Le Maroc) but why add the "pour Elle?" Leave the name alone and promote a unisex attraction to it, thus potentially doubling your sales. There is nothing remotely nailing it as too feminine for a man to wear.

I would recommend it also to those into vintage scents from the 1930s and 1940s. Especially those attracted to floral chypres. A great modern floral oriental.

A fruity mandarin in the opening blast, a darker and warm citrus blast, is skillfully intertwined with a brighter lavender and standings on a sleek jasmine carpet as a foundation of this delightful triad. Now that all sounds rather traditional, but Tauer manages to balance the individual components in a way that they create a new and unusual overall impression.

The second stage is less interesting, but still well crafted with s pleasant slightly cedar-based wood impression. The most intriguing part of the base is a non-incense balsamic base note that forms an inspiring addition towards the end - yes, no real incense in this Tauer but a balsamic-aromatic aroma, which is neither heavy nor ceremonial.

I get moderate sillage, good projection and nine hours of longevity on my skin. After bout six hours it collapses, but I was wrong to write it off at that stage; it came back convincingly to last another couples of hours.

A scent for autumn, elegant with depth and a creative twist. 3.25/5.

I've been wearing my sample of Andy Tauer's Le Maroc Pour Elle for the last six nights running and it's about to run dry – but I'm still not sure I have a handle on it.

I know what I expected – a thick, balmy floral oriental with a head-shop vibe. And for the most part, that's what I get. But damn, this thing is mercurial. It never reads the same way twice on my skin. Over the six times I've tested this so far, I've picked up on (variously): unburned incense cones, amber cubes, floor disinfectant, indolic jasmine, antiseptic lavender, shoe polish, mandarin oranges, gasoline, sweet gooey amber, rubber, candy, tuberose, leather, orange blossoms, and, once, the dry, sweet smell of a paper grocery bag.

It's totally weird. It is slutty and deep and weird. I think I love it. But maybe I hate it though. I'm a bit all over the place with this all-over-the-place perfume.

Part of my confusion comes from the fact that Le Maroc is the least “Andy Tauer” Andy Tauer perfume I've ever smelled. Although it does feature a fizzing Indian incense-and-rose pairing that recalls the Coca Cola twang of Incense Rose, it has nothing of the crystalline, hot-arid feel that runs through his others like a watermark. Andy Tauer perfumes are passionate, but also highly curated. You get the impression that every nuance is fine-tuned with the precision of a Swiss clock.

Le Maroc Pour Elle is not Swiss clock-precise. It is messy as hell, like a five year old child who's smeared her mother's red lipstick all over her mouth.

It begins with a clash. A syrupy, medicinal lavender note immediately butts heads with the howling shoe-polish stink of a serious jasmine overload. Hyper-clean lavender versus a carnal jasmine – no contest. The animal fur stink of jasmine, once the petroleum fumes die down, is just gorgeous. It melts down into a waxy note that doesn't smell truly of rose but of something sweet, soft, and pink. I know there's scads of high quality rose oil in this, but the incense and the jasmine twist its delicate smell into a form I don't recognize. I suspect the rose is just there to soften the jutting hips of the jasmine so that the overall effect is sweetly, thickly lush.

On other occasions, I have picked up a rather pungent, sharp orange blossom note, which, when combined with the honey and the flowers, creates a softly urinous aroma that does indeed recall the orange blossom, honey, and civet of Bal a Versailles (as Luca Turin so aptly pointed out in The Guide).

I even got a strong tuberose note once or twice – at first clipped and green, then creamy, and slightly rubbery. How talented Andy Tauer is, to combine rose and jasmine absolutes and do it in such a way that they conjure up the vivid, breathing form of other flowers. This is the part of the perfume that feels classically French to me – that weave of expensive-smelling flowers and female skank.

But most of the perfume feels like an attar to me. It is a dark brown perfume, and stains the skin. Every time I wear my sample, I feel like I should be anointing myself with it carefully, like I would a concentrated perfume oil or pure parfum, applying it in minute drops to my wrists instead of spraying it. I feel it sink into my skin and become part of my natural scent, mixing with my own skin oils and musk.

The backing tape to it all is a fizzing, cheap Indian incense smell, almost identical to the smell of unburned incense cones and amber cubes. A deep brown, 1970's style patchouli adds just the right amount of head shop grunginess to rough up the florals and ground them a little. Combined with the mandarin oil, it's like having a tiny drop of Karma (by Lush) wrapped up in the heart of the perfume, surrounded by expensive rose and jasmine absolutes. Le Maroc swings between smelling ultra-expensive and French to cheap and hippy-ish and back again. I'm confused (and intrigued).

The mixture of expensive, attar-like oils and cheap, low-quality incense is oddly intoxicating. That's not a criticism, by the way – the appearance of a cheap note propped up against a sea of expensive, luxe notes is an effective way to draw attention to the expensive stuff, kind of like a bas relief effect. I've noticed this cheap-expensive combination in other perfumes such as Noir de Noir (a cheap rosewater note against expensive dark chocolate) and Traversee du Bosphore (a painfully artificial apple and pomegranate syrup accord that's counteracted by lush lokum and suede).

I'm starting to see the kind of person who wears this perfume and wears it right. In my mind's eye, I see a woman in a dirndl skirt and a baby tied at her voluminous hip, wandering through a health food store, picking up incense sticks, smelling them, and dabbing all sorts of essential oils on her skin. She has laughter lines on her suntanned face and a smile that makes men melt. Her smoker's laugh contains some kind of sexmagic. No doubt about it, Le Maroc is a zaftig perfume, a husky thing with child-bearing hips and a crude sensuality about it.

I am not quite sure I have the sexual confidence to pull this off, even if I do have the child-bearing hips thing down flat. Still, I can't get this weird, sensual, earthy, head-twisting perfume out of my head, and that spells trouble.