Description
Tauer and Pera have announced another film-inspired fragrance, as part of their Kickstarter campaign for the next film in the “Woman’s Picture” series, Only Child. The new fragrance, which is called Dark Passage, also initiates a new series in the Tableau de Parfums/Woman’s Picture project: Snapshots.
The Snapshots fragrances will be packaged in 7 ml enamel atomizers and available as limited editions. Designed to be smaller in scale, this format will allow Tauer and Pera the opportunity to experiment with new ideas. The pair regard the larger scale fragrance Miriam (and Loretta, which will launch later this year) “as portraits which capture the breadth of a life lived in full. The snapshot fragrances are handheld, and preserve fleeting moments in time.”
Designed as a unisex scent—”both femme fatale and private eye”—the fragrance “[evokes] the open road and the small town diner, steaming cups of coffee on a formica countertop, bright sun coming in parallel lines through window blinds, crisscrossing a dim room with their highly-keyed stripes.” Dark Passage was launched in 2012. The nose behind this fragrance is Andy Tauer.
Nikita1982 – :
An absolute crying shame that this is no longer available. The best patchouli heavy fragrance I have ever tried. Earthy and dark without being heavy, hefty dose of cocoa without being sweet (do not think chocolate, think dark and bittersweet)…Dark Passage smolders with seduction and mystery. I am a huge patchouli fan and am always on the hunt for that perfect earthy hippie patchouli with a rounded, polished edge and as soon as I smelled Dark Passage I knew I had found my patchouli holy grail. If you are lucky enough to own it, I envy you. Because I feel extremely honored just to have received a sample. This is one perfectly put together creation. 10/10.
George237 – :
This is a wonderful fragance. smcandsmc alredy wrote about it so overall, I can’t add almost nothing 🙂
Remininscent of Lutens Borneo 1834, which I also love.
A dark, rich, patchouli, iris and smokeyness. A masterpiece!
10/10
irmscher999 – :
Got the small bottle as incentive for donating to the Kickstarter campaign for Only Child– totally worth it. Given the name, I was expecting something funkier, maybe with leather? Actual scent is better than that– the best kind of sweetness: natural, subtle, not overpowering synthetic; and that non-obviousness seems to be the key to this scent.
I get a beautiful plummy note from the start through the drydown. Rich, red/purple colors immediately came to mind, like plumcots, with a slightly bright juicy freshness like I had just cut into a ripe one. Perhaps Mr. Tauer wants to bring to mind Miss Bacall’s richly red lips (yes, the film was black and white, but you don’t need technicolor to know what color Max Factor she was wearing).
Not worry, though, the fruit is surrounded by the earthy tobacco and vetiver. This is not kid stuff kool aid. The beautiful brightness left as the earthier heart came out, and the plummy juice became more rooty and I could sense some of the birch, the patchouli (but again, it’s not funky or dirty). If we are to go with the film noir trope, I can picture this heart-drydown as the sexuality in those old films. They couldn’t be too obvious or blunt, Bacall and Bogart didn’t use the word “sex” or hit the sheets onscreen, but Bacall certainly could insinuate it with her voice, her eyes, her smile. I think that’s what the frag is going for– a Hayes Code kind of sexuality, something that is implied by snappy banter and a charged glance from Bacall’s eyes as they are lit by a thin slash of light.
If that was the intent, then well done, sir. I get that this is a lot of specific narrative for a scent, and if I hadn’t been told that it was inspired by a Bacall/Bogart film, I wouldn’t have thought of them specifically. But so what? Don’t we love perfume because of its ability to create this kind of romantic nonsense? It’s much worse to hear that a frag is supposed to represent something specific and you smell it and think “I don’t get that at all, wtf?”
I can very easily imagine that Bacall smelled like ‘Dark Passage’, and when Bogart got home, he relished that lingering scent on his trenchcoat.