Luce
Meo Fusciuni (2013)

Luce is like a plain girl whose face suddenly transforms when she smiles. Full of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments that shuffle so quietly underneath its sweet, minty beeswax skin that you’d be forgiven for writing it off as an amber, this is a scent that rewards close study. My first impression is of sugared aniseed and vinyl set against a dark green backdrop of fir trees, underscored with a touch of adiposal fat coagulating on a dead animal. Somehow, this works – a multi-dimensional taste at the back of your tongue that draws all the bickering fresh, bitter, fatty, medicinal, and plastic notes to a warm, soft bosom that stifles all sound, let alone conflict.

It is only later, when Luce has moved on from its camphoraceous to its long, sweet, powdery drydown that I realize that this is an essay on benzoin. No wonder people look at this and think ‘amber’. But to me, benzoin on its own smells at once more subtle and more complex than when it is placed in an amber accord with vanilla and labdanum. Here, shorn and unadorned, it smells uniquely of itself – slightly ‘gippy’, like dampened potato flour, minty-camphoraceous, and of course, like incense, specifically unlit papiers d’armenie, those little strips of porous paper dipped in benzoin resinoid. This accord is attractively moldy or even ‘musty’, a quality your brain doesn’t normally associate pleasantly with a perfume but switches gears when it smells the same thing in a library full of old books, wafting decaying lignin spores into the ether.

Much of the same in the drydown, except for a hawthornish suede accent – think elegant Chamois glove leather – that lends the bookish dust some much needed structure. There is also, in my mind, a memory link between the hawthorn note and the anise note at the beginning, something hauntingly gripe-watery, sweet, and herbal. Luce feels very original to me, but of course, as I write and sniff, three fragrances with similar vibes jump to mind, namely; Guerlain’s Bois d’Armenie (those sweet, dusty incense burning papers), Mona di Orio’s Bohea Boheme (a slightly bitter, camphoraceous benzoin-tea scent with a powdery drydown), and Guerlain’s Cuir Beluga (the same white, creamy hawthorn suede). Quiet scents all, but Luce is quieter still. In fact, sometimes, I strain to hear its little voice at all. I rarely ask for scents to be stronger than they are – because someone somewhere will inevitably hear that as a plea for more Norlimbanol or Clearwood – but in the case of Luce, I would love the volume turned up by 30%, please.

Mushroom amber. Not sure how this translates as an evocation of light but it's an intriguing, if mild-mannered, take. This is amber draped in leather, raw wood, dusky vanilla, papery patchouli, hints of licorice, and it's a dry, non-sweet composition, that in its totality has some of the otherworldly, rubbed skin smell of mushrooms. Or perhaps the elusive, gently salty musk of ambergris is the intention? Surely a scent to be wafted into reading rooms of old libraries, if they don't already smell that way.
Less interesting in the drydown, when it turns into a hum reminiscent of some formless orris compositions.

Social psychology as a discipline has given relatively little attention to the problem of LIGHT in perfumery, it seems that banality could be a creative strategy to make perfumes.
First of all: Neutrinos are not faster than light! Denied the discovery of Italian researchers. The results that questioned the theory of relativity were falsified by an error in cable connection between a GPS sensor and a computer used to calculate the time in which neutrinos were fired from CERN in Geneva to the Gran Sasso Laboratories.

Here we want to define the speed of light. If we take a period of fifteen years, we find that the light gets faster and faster and even changes. Let's start with Luce (2000) by Beth Terry Creative Universe. Among citrus notes leave the first rays of light, between a cover lavender, a synthetic musk and much crap... The rays come up to Lux (2006) by Mona di Orio. Now we can smell again citrus notes with cedarwood and sandal, then amber, benzoin, musk and vanilla. Finally the Light picks up speed reaching Luci ed Ombre (2013) by Masque, or would it be more accurate to say Giuseppe Imprezzabile (alias Meo Fusciuni). Here the perfume is very different, in fact we have musk and cedarwood but jasmine replaced citrus notes. Then the light ends this creative journey: here it is, Luce (2013) by Meo Fusciuni (alias Giuseppe Imprezzabile). Here some cedarwood, sandal, amber, benzoin, vanilla.
Ops! If you mean Light as Luce, you have also to remember Light Blu by Dolce & Gabbana: here again cedarwood, musk, jasmine, amber.
Are you wondering why Mister Pregoni is talking about ingredients? Simple, to give form to the banality I need substance, which is why I speak about ingredients!
Ambroxide, widely known by the brand name Ambroxan, is a naturally occurring terpenoid and one of the key constituents responsible for the odor of ambergris and bla, bla, bla…
Please, next time could you add a little of art… We need neurons and not neutrinos!

The leather, cedar, birch and tobacco of Luce all blend together into a softness that smells mostly of mild tobacco to me. The dry leaves and leather scent is quickly overtaken by the warm and persistently sweet amber, benzoin and vanilla aspect. These top notes are so receptive and shy dry that I hesitate to call them top notes at all as the boldness of the amber tones presents first with the leather/tobacco following close behind becoming the base. There are no topnotes in this one. This is an absolutely beautiful masculine fragrance. When I think of the term "warm fuzzies" this fragrance is what I would imagine. I always try to find comparable fumes when I smell a fragrance to put them into some context of what I already am familiar with, and Luce is very close to, but not quite as complex as Pohadka by Ys Uzac. After the dust settles with Luce it is a very tobacco/leather amber perfume. I am not a big fan of sweet oriental fragrances, but this is how I like my amber - modulated by woods and leaves. Its not too sweet and oozes warmth and comfort. I would recommend to anyone. It has a quiet uplifting strength to it.