Dana Tabu Rose (2015) // Tabu's Nuptials {Perfume Review & Musings}

Tabu Rose eau de parfum by Dana opens on an absolutely delicious and delicate rose-lychee top, with a musky background. Despite its attempt at conveying frailty and vulnerability, the scent is meant to be powerful - and this can felt in a certain stringency of the ingredients. It is not meant to be contemplated too close. You will need to step back and let it perfume your surroundings to see how much you like it...

Tabu Rose © Dana Classics

Needless to say, it has nothing to do whatsoever with the original Tabu by Dana (1932), which was meant to convey a smoldering atmosphere à la Spaniard and to reflect the fantasies of an old-school man about bordellos' public flowers. If Tabu Rose is meant to interpret a fantasy, it is one about the woman as rose - virginal and pure. The opposite in fact of the first feverish Tabu. We might be inhaling a dichotomy, a well-known, unwieldy, unjust and, alas, productive opposition between so-called "putas" and "virgen". But you cannot renegue on Tabu's history.

"For your beautiful moment" - Tabu Rose © Dana Classics

June Amira, who worked hard on the development of the latest generation of Dana fragrances, may not have had such a clear intention in mind, you can only note however that Tabu Rose smells more like a wedding perfume than illicit venues. It smells impossibly romantic, dewy, aquatic, transparent, with just the right hint of musk and vanilla and cedarwood to flesh it out. It is a well-done composition as far as you may want to smell of a pastel drawing of fresh, virginal roses deploying the seemingly innocent charms of a profusion of petals.

Fragrance notes: Lychee, Bulgarian Rose, Warm Cedarwood, and Liquid Amber