Dana
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The attack is sharp and clarifying—aldehydic bergamot and coriander seed create a citric snap that feels almost peppery, whilst neroli adds a whisper of green florality. Within moments, however, the spice accord begins asserting dominance, and you catch something decidedly un-fresh lurking beneath the brightness, a suggestion of what's to come.
The fragrance pivots dramatically as clove emerges with genuine bite, piercing through the honeyed softness of ylang-ylang and jasmine. The oriental rose here isn't dewy or romantic; instead, it grows heavier and more perfumed, whilst the animalic notes (civet predominant) create an unsettling warmth that feels almost feverish against the skin, intensely intimate and rather uncompromising.
What remains is a powdery, ambroxan-rich embrace of benzoin and musk, the patchouli and oakmoss creating an earthy, almost tobacco-like dryness. The fragrance becomes a second skin—barely perceptible beyond a few centimetres but unmistakably present, a phantom scent of aged leather, incense smoke, and skin.
Tabu Dana is a fragrance that wears its age with aristocratic confidence—a 1932 composition that feels less like a historical artefact and more like stumbling upon a leather-bound diary in your grandmother's wardrobe. Jean Carles has orchestrated something genuinely unsettling here, a fragrance that refuses the saccharine comfort most florals offer. The opening assault of bergamot and coriander establishes an almost medicinal brightness, but this is merely theatre before the curtain rises on the real drama: a clove-and-jasmine heart that pulses with an almost feverish intensity, undercut by a narcissus note that feels faintly narcotic rather than fresh. The benzoin and civet in the base create something animalic and sweaty—not unpleasant, but decidedly carnal, a sillage of skin musk and aged amber that clings closer than whispers. What emerges is a fragrance for those drawn to complexity over comfort, for evening hours when sophistication means embracing the shadowy rather than the luminous. This is not a scent for the timid; it's worn by those who understand that true elegance occasionally requires a touch of the transgressive. The spice-dominated accord (88%) ensures it never turns purely floral or soft—instead, Tabu Dana maintains a perpetual tension between refinement and something altogether more dangerous.
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3.9/5 (318)