Dune by Christian Dior, 1991

I am Dune's number 1 fan! I began wearing this fabulous fragrance in roughly 1993. I have deviated rarely. I love the spiciness and the way the scent changes after applied. I have received MORE compliments on this perfume than on any other. I normally wear it everyday, but will switch sometimes depending on my mood. I do NOT find it a depressing scent!!! No No No.... I generally pick the more spicy/powdery scents-Opium, Cinnabar, Obsession. I have NOT found but one newer scent that I will wear. All the celebrity perfumes stink. I like the original Burberry perfume (the newer one). I do however believe that this is a more "mature" woman fragrance, although I was in my 30s when I began wearing it. It never fails that when I am in a crowded elevator, lounge, powder room, or airplane that people ask me what it is. I usually ask, "do you like it?".....and NO ONE has ever responded no. Every person wants to know if it is new! I always tell them no but it has become rather hard to find-large department stores like Macy's and Nordstrom still carry it. I use to be able to purchase it from the military BX, but they have all gone to the new celebrity scents-UGH! I can still find it sometimes in a designer boutique, but it is a rare thing. I love the way that it softens and deepens after a few hours of wear. I believe it will always be my very favorite! I truly hope that Dior continues to keep it out there for those of us who are true fans.

What a wonderful fragrance is it! Dune is a really indolent, breezing, silent, slightly iodate and almost transcendant fresh oriental. The puzzled and averagely heavy beginning produces a spell that brings finally out a perfectly balanced and multifaceted soft work of art with dozens of facets and nuances. There is something conservative, herbal, spicy-dry and mellow at once immediately after the first spray, while the final outcome is fruity, rosey, delicately woody, slightly powdery-incensey, salty and ambery with enough air to be a quit whiff whirling in the sky. The fruits, the spices and the ylang-ylang exude hints of flying exoticism and melancholy in the air. The first, almost vintage, smell is produced by the initial interaction of aldehydes, rosewood, bergamot, rose-jasmine, tangerine, mellow fruits, multifaceted diverse floral elements and roots (herbs and vetiver). The earth is present as well are present sky and sea. A barely creamy patchouli starts in a while to become notable, shadowing a bit the juice. The whiffs with the time start to become ethereal as an heavenly pond due to peony, a touch of salt and lickens with their aquatic trails and going on the smell starts evolving towards something delicately fruity-floral, ambery, honeyed, mossy and wonderfully smooth like a cloud. The patchouli is starring till the end, till the falling of the shadows in front of the great ocean. This unisex and unique silent scent teleports me far in wonderful sunny enviroments when the sun is setting and you feel sad and free on this wonderful world.

According to evolutionary biology there are various forces that bring about genetic transformation. And while evolution in review might appear to flow, when the driving force is mutation, change is abrupt. Take Angel (1992), which blew minds when it appeared on the scene, having sprung fully formed from the head of Thierry Mugler. Im not saying Angel isnt a mutant. But she does appear to have a predecessor if not ancestor: Diors Dune (1991). Ignore the beachlike coziness Diors marketing has tried to sell us. Dune is spooky. It has an edible/inedible complex at its heart that is conceptually similar to Angel, just less apparent. Where the Angel dilemma is immediate, desirable vs poisonous, Dunes is more something to be considered at your leisure, fresh vs freeze-dried. Also, while these push/pull tendencies in Angel are played at volume 11, theyre more like elevator music in Dune. They occupy that nearly subliminal realm where you are aware and yet succumb without intending to. Not to say that Dune is quiet. Theres something actually quite loud about it even in drydown. But the juxtaposition in the accords themselves is almost imperceptible next to Angels loud-mouthed testifying. Angel is Freddy Kruger coming at you, claws bared. Dune is more the nightmare where everything appears perfectly normal, yet feels disquietingly wrong. Since Dune relies on construction rather than volume to drive home its point of otherness, I find it the more unsettling perfume. If Angel is deranged, Dune is disconcerting, ultimately a more powerful trait if you ask me.

Dune is really hard to pin down, category-wise. And that's fine---it makes it interesting. It's a gestalt scent: sweet notes, floral notes, "dry" notes, wood notes, amber notes, resin notes, a subtle fruity note, pale musk notes, aldehyde notes, all coming and going and intermixing to create an overall impression of something else entirely. Something very beautiful but not at all predictable. If I press my nose to my skin at the edges of where the scent was applied, I can find what I couldn't get at first sniff---the smell of the seaside, of warm, almost metallic sand and salt air moving over it. In another way, this scent reminds me of uncut Bosc pears on a metal plate in the sun. On me, there is no sense of flowers; I know they are in there, but after a few minutes on the skin I lose them. It's ok, though, as they've simply given their contribution to the evolving whole. I find this scent otherworldly, subtly sensual, intriguing. I like it because it is not simple, and because its intelligence is one that remembers perfume should smell good on the body, not one of odd edges or dissonances. I find that I re-spray it occasionally just to enjoy the evolution of it again. I like its contradictory yet harmonious quality of raw elegance or cerebral sensuality. They should have called it "Goblin-fruit" for its earthy yet fey nature... Sillage on me is moderate, more noticeable in heat, and duration is a couple hours at most. I feel it would work nicely on a man as well.