Fireside Intense by Sonoma Scent Studio, 2007

This scent on my skin has the most amazing aura of sensual, dark, new leather. The first spray suggests gasoline and then rubber, the rubber of tires and also the expensive leather of a brand new car interior. It's like gasoline poured over charcoal to make a fire on the beach in Malibu, and we are driving away urgently, the tires leaving burnt rubber imprints, but I can smell the new leather seats of the fancy sports car over the faint traces of smoke as we are peeling away from the scene. We are probably going for a hike in the dark woods, need to get there as soon as possible, seduction in the air, there may not be a moon but it doesn't matter for what we have in mind. Pure potential. This is a dark scent, sexual and brooding and very seductive. It represents the dark, intimate moment after first deciding to act on animal impulse but before anything has actually occurred. It is pure potential and at the same time memory of the physical moment that sources it. It is arresting, intense, and dries down beautifully. That said it's not for people who like to smell perfumey. But I am 42 and a mother and I can carry this off quite well. I have a lot of experience to back it up. Love it.

Sonoma Scent Studios Fireside Intense is a mid-winter comfort scent. Aromatherapy rather than cologne, but genius nevertheless. I feel the same way about Muscs Koublaï Khän Fireside Intense is to smoke what the Serge Lutens scent does for sunkissed skin. Fireside Intense is a technical masterpiece. Meditation teachers and alternative healers might get you to close your eyes and picture yourself in the relaxing scenario of choice well, this stuff is a creative visualization session in a bottle. One spray and you are beside a campfire. The wood snaps and cracks, sparks fly and a line of smoke climbs lazily into the starlit sky. . . (Later on in the journey I get peat smoke, and Im hiking Scotlands Western Isles, listening to the clack of tweed looms from every croft.) And its smoke, not ashtray. I usually struggle with smoke notes in colognes. While I love Comme des Garcons Kyoto on paper, the minute it hits my skin you would think Id just put out a cigarette. Anyone who can make a smoke fragrance I can wear must know what they are doing. I think its the castoreum and leather notes that give this scent such a warm, sensual glow. (Full disclosure: Im just a castoreum-lovin fool.) However, be warned that Fireside Intense is anything but an everyday scent, which is probably because it so perfectly achieves what it sets out to do. I first wore this the day after a backyard barbeque. My wife suggested I really should have had a shower and a change of clothes, and there was not one thing I could say to dissuade her. Having said that, its hard to imagine a better scent for a hike on a frosty morning, especially as it dries down to a mix of soft leather, peat and smoke. As they say, on the occasions when you want to smell like this, nothing else will do. Its somewhat spoiled for me by the sneaking suspicion that a sociologist could write a crazy Baudrillard-style rant about Fireside Intense: spray-on campfire smoke for people in downtown apartments. What better to wear with a chunky divers watch and Eddie Bauer lumberjack shirt as you jump into your all-wheel-drive for the commute to your cubicle? That and an online piece that quoted someone saying this frag made the reviewer smell like a piece of meat that fell down the back of the barbecue and got burned to a crisp. All said, thumbs up for perfumer Laurie Ericksons mastery of this genre, despite the limitations.