A toast for Mona di Orio: Oud

Well, here we are: today is December 9th, and I decided not to live this as a sad day, but as a happy moment. Today I'm breathing also for her, I'm laughing also for her, I'm sitting on a sunny bench in the park also for her. And tonight, I'm raising a glass of red wine to her.  It 's true, a year ago Mona passed away, but it's also true that as long as she was here, she chose not to waste her time, and left us much to be grateful for. Today my husband and I chose her Oud to sweep away any sadness.

A kind-hearted, gentle, yet powerful and mysterious Oud. Mona loved base notes and "played" them with great satisfaction: woody notes, resins, musks are used in her scents not only to give support to other notes, but with a taste for the notes themselves, for their richness and depth. In this fragrance Mona used authentic Laotian Oud to infuse the scent with a double nature, spiritual/animal. The spiritual nature is suggested by the green, dry feeling of citrus, bitter and transparent elemi and mystical cedar wood+oud, while the the earthy/animalic feeling is conveyed by a powerful accord  oud+patchouli/osmanthus/ambergris/nagarmotha (a kind of papyrus growing in India, the source of cipriol, a dry, green, slightly animal note). The fragrance is perfectly balanced between these two overlapping feelings: you cannot perceive its spirituality without being aware of an animal breathing below, while you can't let yourself be seduced by this "carnal" nature without realizing that part of its charm lies in the opposite, mystical feeling, wrapping it like a crown of silvery light.
A fragrance to unify Earth and Heaven.

(Thanks to Basenotes for the picture of a smiling Mona)