Onda Parfum Extrait (2008)
by Vero Profumo

Aesthetics might be shared but beauty is experienced personally. Discussions of aesthetics often lead to unanswerable questions on the nature of attraction, absolutes and subjectivity.

Onda's contribution to the debate is to show where the discussion takes place. Wearing Onda shows you that beauty is experienced at the limits. Simple ease and comfort might be found without much effort, but satisfaction and the greater pleasures don’t land in your lap. They require your engagement and determination. The cliché, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ takes the burden off the object and places it in the mind of the witness. Onda refutes the passivity of the 'beholder' making the experience not just looking, but craving. Onda fuses beauty with desire. The question shifts from, "What is Beauty?" to Beauty slapping you in the face, smiling and asking, "So, what are you going to do about it?" Onda's question of beauty come in the form of a dare.

The mirror image of beauty isn't ugliness, it is fear and Onda gives you desire and fear in equal helpings. Fear as much as beauty balances on the precipice of activity and passivity. In considering fear you find the seeds for the broader questions of agency and fate. Is a fear of heights a fear of falling or jumping?

Onda interrogates beauty in a similar manner and beauty is revealed to be neither pretty nor polite. It is sinister and seductive. It is gorgeous. It comes at you forcefully whether you're ready or not. Onda favors destructive beauty and the heights that challenging work inspires. Beauty can cut, but it can also transform you. It is up to you whether or not to take the risk.

I wear Onda EDP often, but have recently been introduced to the Extrait de Parfum, which is a slightly different breed of cat. A little less alarming, a good bit more seductive. The differences are noticeable in the projection. The EDP uses passionfruit to light the fuse on the hot, salty, earthy heart of Onda. The EDP lunges at you with a sense of momentum and feels constantly expanding as if an exercise in olfactory physics. The Extrait moves more fluidly. It surrounds you and seeps into you. It's harder to pinpoint its source even though you know where you dabbed it. It is extremely rich and elaborate. The Extrait is darker than the EDP and its complexity makes it denser, though not heavier. It is even more alluring than the EDP and cuts me deeper. The Extrait is more a chypre than the EDP and while it has all the magnetism of the classical chypres, it is neither retro in style nor reminiscent in tone.

Kern uses three concentrations (Eau de Parfum, Voile d’Extrait and Extrait de Parfum) to explore the range of ideas that she presents in each of her perfumes. They share common ground, but they offer different perspectives. In Onda, the EDP and the Extrait both play with the notion of wildness and the whimsy of trying to tame it, the capriciousness of control. Onda EDP gives its animal a long leash and provokes a feeling of recklessness, excitement. The animal in the Extrait appears more tame and on the surface the Extrait seems less less audacious than the EDP. But here is the the Extrait’s threat: It might be quitely purring at the moment, but how tame can a wild animal really be? When will the confidence of your safety shatter? The EDP urges impulsiveness. The Extrait feels dangerous.

There is an etiquette in corporate perfumery that dictates that perfume shouldn’t challenge the consumer for fear of alienating even one potential buyer. The rule is reversed in niche perfumery. It’s a spin on neo-punk: a show of outrageousness or non-conformity but no attempt to alter the status quo.

Kern looks past these constraints and makes perfume that both challenges the wearer and disrupts convention. She reserves the right to provoke. Her work doesn’t simply express a range of aesthetics, it engineers aesthetics to poke at the questions of beauty, desire and self. The questions aren't easy, and neither are Kern's answers, but they are rewarding and satisfying.

Wear Onda. I dare you.

from scenthurdle.com

Genre: Leather

Onda is one seriously weird smell. On a smelling strip it is a bold, animalic leather that vies with Bandit, Knize Ten, and Oud Cuir d’Arabie in pungency, married to a potent and bizarre peanut butter and hospital disinfectant accord, the likes of which I’ve never before encountered. When I first smelled Onda on paper my reaction was revulsion, but with such initially disturbing scents as Muscs Koublaï Khan, Kouros, and Yatagan in mind, I withheld judgment. Another case against evaluating fragrances on paper: on the skin Onda makes a very different impression.

Onda's leather is no less blunt when worn on the skin, but I’m happy to report that the illusion of peanut butter subsides after several minutes, revealing in its place an intense and sweet tobacco smoke accord that sends my nose scurrying in search of a humidor. What smelled like disinfectant on the test strip emerges as a combination of ginger and extremely dry vetiver, the latter with strong overtones of licorice. A highly contrasting floral note emerges not long after, piling yet another layer of weight and complexity onto the structure. Onda is nothing if not ambitious!

Onda is also loud, and I mean LOUD: the neighborhood will know you’re wearing it. The floral component inevitably bows out over the course of three or four hours, leaving the smoky campfire and riding tack accord to stand alone in all its dark majesty for several more hours, with no diminution in overall volume. In its late stages, Onda resembles an even smokier, ashier version of Andy Tauer’s Lonestar Memories. Being considerably less sweet is much to Onda’s advantage: unlike the Tauer scent, it never smells like “smoke” flavored barbecue sauce.

Onda never sheds the raw intensity with which it opens, and so like Muscs Koublaï Khan, Yatagan, or Kouros, it’s going to divide critical opinion. I don’t expect too many neutral reviews of this scent! After multiple wearings and much internal debate I rate Onda positively for imagination, daring, and originality, with the caveat that you might well find it nauseating. Masterful or horrible: you be the judge.

Brown, woody, humid antique-furniture vibes. Peculiar, gloomy and masculine, with a really dry, pungent and earthy feel. Pretty much no counterparts or dissonances - no room for refreshing or sweetening notes, or other classic accords and escamotages. You can smell great, high-quality vetiver and ambergris, with a persistent spicy-sparkling ginger-nutmeg accord. All is quite simple and straightforward, in a minimal and linear style and a great consonance of notes. Honestly I do not feel anything challenging here - or, better say: surely challenging to wear, as for many contemporary fragrances that tend to push forward the boundaries of perfumery - so quite on the thin line between a more abstract "smell" and a traditionally-structured perfume... but still, itself, it is surprisingly linear and simple. Beautiful and bright drydown comprising a (dried) orris note, a hint of patchouli, and slight debris of dried fruits and flowers. A bit cloying honestly, and also, a bit boring after a while – but that is my inner taste speaking: personally not my cup of tea, but a great execution with great quality materials.

8/10

Dry Vetiver Earth

Years ago I tried Onda extrait at The Scent Bar and recoiled - recoiled . I was frightened by it. It smelt like TCP ( a british antiseptic - very potent smelling ) to me . Hence I stayed far away from Onda for years.

I retrieved a sample of the extrait from my sample box, graciously given to me by dear Larimar and behold ! My nose has matured ....or something magical has happened for I finally 'get' Onda in all its dry vetiver and earthy ,dusty beauty. How I got TCP to begin with amazes me now. I should hang my head in shame.

Opens with that gingery mace making it a spicey leather and then the rooty vetiver emerges wrapped in with some grounding earth . The whole thing is very truthful and an old world scent. A very thoughtful scent. It gorunds the same way Serge Noire by Serge Lutens does. It's somber, elegant and bold. Not for the faint of heart but for the brave hearted.

I think Onda is brilliant. Unisex and mysterious. A wonder.

Pros: Grounding and Compelling
Cons: Price"

Jaw-droppingly original, astounding brilliant; a prismatic citrus/vetiver scent for those who find contemporary citrus/vetiver too dull.

This review is for the Eau de Parfum version of Onda, not the extrait. Apologies for sticking it in the wrong spot (I've requested it be moved here: http://www.basenotes.net/products/onda-eau-de-parfum)

From its playful opening notes to its long, honeyed drydown, Swiss perfumer Vero Kern bitch-slaps contemporary perfumery by singlehandedly producing one of the most profound takes on vetiver and citrus in years.

Onda EdP starts bright, with an immense passionfruit and ginger burst rendered through subtle animalics to create a textured and attention-grabbing opening. This is citrus for those who are bored with the safety and predictability of modern citrus fragrances, but there's also a distinct floral aspect from the ylang-ylang that functions as a bridge to the honey that will see the scent through to its end. These notes dance into the picture like a systematic, choreographed procession, blaring color and life into the mix. Yet there's an unavoidable dirtiness, suggesting that the opening is a front for something more ominous yet to arrive.

And arrive it does. What's so provocative about the main framework of this scent is that it's vetiver -- but it's like no other vetiver you've smelled before. It's not that it's low in the mix, per se, but rather that in being married to the mace and the coriander, the note is spun off into a wild new territory marking an ideal counterpart to the sweet and diffusive top. It doesn't feel as astringent or dark as vetiver can; here it's candied by the honey that ties it seamlessly to the fruity mids. And that's one of the most striking aspects of Onda: the seamlessness in which the notes don't simply interconnect and compliment one another, but showcase one anothers' best features. Yet through it all, there are some indolic animalics present, structured upon a sweaty musk and a soft, supple leather. Their purpose, it seems, is to raise and dirty up the main features of the scent by lurking in the shadows, playing structuring roles -- but they also double as the darker side of vetiver that's mysteriously attenuated in the mix.

There's a ton of character to this perfume; so much that I see this less as a fragrance that will compliment the wearer, but more as one to which the wearer walks alongside trying to keep up the pace, potentially falling behind as Onda charges on ahead. This is the smell of sketchy carnival/circus rolling into town; the promise of a kind of excitement that's undercut by something majorly troubling. While Kern 's compositions are notoriously grounded in the classical style, contemporary connections might be drawn to Tauer's Lonestar Memories (Kern and Tauer are friends, it seems); but frankly, I find the Tauer to be a train wreck that smells more like detergent than anything (he redeems himself with others). Onda has a little bit of this detergent vibe going on in that it cites industrial products very subtly (cleaning products, mainly), but also very smartly. And while I did expected this to be more animalic and challenging than it actually is (I'm drawn to "difficult"), there's no denying the faint sulphurous urine note that works its way through with brilliant nuance.

This is a gorgeous and wildly prismatic perfume that's highly wearable to those who don't mind a little dirt with their beauty. For those that care about such thing, the longevity and projection are colossal.

Pros: Beautifully rendered and composed; full of life and character. It's as if the circus has come to town!
Cons: Not quite as raunchy as I hoped."