Salvador Dali (1983)
by Salvador Dali

I wore this perfume in the 80:ies, and I truly loved it. Salvador Dali is the perfume who made me leave Chanel No 5!!! I had Salvador Dali until it dissapeared from the stores in my country.

And now I have found it again! I have tried quite a lot of the fumes I used to wear way back in time, and not all of them are what they used to be. I guess some of them are reformulated. But not Salvador Dali, it smells exactly the same as it did in the 80:ies!!!

Today I have both No 5 and Salvador Dali, and enjoy them both.

Salvador Dali starts aldehydic, and if you try this perfume for the first time, please, let it stay on your skin quite a while before you judge it! The greatest pleasure starts after half an hour of wearing it! It is very longlasting, too.

The bottle is totally adorable! Two thumbs up from me for Salvador Dali!

I’ve seen where this called a chypre; I’ve also seen it referred to as an Oriental; to confuse the situation more, H & R Genealogy positions it between aldehydic and sweet floral. What is it, really? I, personally, would call it a chypre, but I wouldn’t argue with Oriental. I think we can all agree with “aldehydic,” but… “sweet”…? It doesn’t come across as sweet to me. All of these labels just go to show how complex and impressive this fragrance is. Salvador Dali is an admirable EDP that hasn’t received the acclaim it deserves. The deep, rich, sensual notes already spring up in the opening, and its citrus / green accord is kicked up to the second or third power by the aldehydes. It is so sensual that I began scanning the pyramid for the animalic notes… Much to my surprise, I didn’t find them listed – must be the indoles from the jasmine. The middle florals form a solid rich floral bouquet with the jasmine slightly dominant to my nose – there is also a fairly strong powder, which continues into the base. The base presents a definite amber and vanilla, but it isn’t what I would call sweet because the cedar and the myrrh have a strong drying presence. It’s a wonderful what-I-would-call chypre base: woody, ambery, and slightly resinous. Hours later the myrrh note is still caressing the skin. Another wonderful ‘80s feminine fragrance.

This 2' bottle of Salvador Dali (black lips) has floated around with me from various apartments and finally to my permanent home since the late 80's. Back then, I was primarily collecting perfume for the bottles. As an artist I was happy to have this bottle since I had studied Dali's work in my college art history class and knew it was his design. I had never attempted in all the time I owned it to get acquainted with the scent inside until recently. I have Basenotes and its contributors to thank for teaching me how to fully experience scents and helping me to discover the many treasures I had right under my nose if I would have just opened the bottles (vintage Jicky and Shalimar among them), dabbed some on and patiently waited.

A few weeks ago I decide to try this and was so surprised by how beautiful it is that I could have kicked myself in the head for not trying it years ago. The opening notes are very floral which I'm usually not a fan of, but this is so well done that I can more than live with it. The sillage at this point is good, so a little bit goes a long way. As it starts to dry down the flowers seem to make a rapid exit and I start getting notes of rich leather and dark tea even though these notes are not listed in any description of this perfume's composition that I've found.. Eventually the tea recedes and the leather note becomes more prominent and the scent seems to stay like this for a while, which is great because I'm crazy about leather notes. At this point it smells quite similar to the leather in Bal a Versailles. In the extreme drydown stage the tea note comes back again and that's what's left as you wake up and smell your wrist the next morning. This scent is gorgeous! My bottle is old and tiny, so my fear is that I may run out one day soon if I keep wearing it the way I have been and when I attempt to replace it, the only thing that will be available will be a, most likely, reformulated and watered down version.

One of the reasons I've always had a bottle of this in my fragrance wardrobe from since it was launched (not the same bottle, obviously), is that no other perfume smells like Salvador Dali. This is an exotic, complex scent that can have the danger of wearing the wearer if not careful, but when used sparingly it develops into an exquisite oriental shawl that keeps you warm and makes you feel sultry regardless of the situation.

It must be an "olfactoric" version of "Burning Giraffe". Smells like putrifying lilies + moth balls. Strong, churchy, retro. Reminds me a little of Chanel no5 (but Chanel is much more elegant)

I've been in love with this perfume since my first whiff of it around 20 years ago, it was one of the first scents I owned, and its still one of my top favorites and always will be. Its a flawless, hauntingly beautiful, unique scent, totally unlike any other perfume in the world. An absolute classic. I'm VERY lucky to own one of the limited edition 1983 ten ounce crystal bottles full of pure parfum, it, and the scent inside it, are amazingly beautiful.