D.S & Durga - Orris Root

Happy New Year everyone! To you there in Kuwait and Venezuela, and to you in Morocco and Russia, and all of you guys in the US! Nice to see you all, and as you might have notice I´ve got me a flag counter and it is so much fun to see all the visitors from so many different countries here.


Orris root is the root from the flower iris. The root have been in use since the antique, both medical and cosmetic. Now it is almost only used in perfumes. It´s a time consuming process to make perfume from the root and the final result is very expensive. As a scent, orris root smells like violets, but also iris, soil, root vegetables (carrot, but also parsnip), sweetness and powder.


It was a while ago I first tried Orris Root from D.S & Durga, but even though I liked it I could n´t really write about it. So I have left my little sample alone, until yesterday evening when i decided to try it again. It is so much fun when i try a perfume again, and realise that now I am capable of experience it, analyse it, smell it and of course, hopefully manage to make it justice when I write about it.


Orris Root begins with a violet explosion. This isn´t a shy wiolet hidning in the forrest, no this is a giant violet in macro, you know... VIOLET!!!!! My sample isn´t a spray sample, so the top note settles quite fast and become softer and more complex, yes actaully really complex and interesting.


The smell of violet is still there, but together with soft, powdery iris, moist soil and newly harvested root vegetables. There is no doubt about that it is the smell of a root I can feel, but at the same time it is like the smell of a underground flower. Well, there isn´t anything like a underground flower, since all flowers strive towards light and air. In Serge Luten´s Iris Silver Mist you can also find the scent of carrots and soil, but I don´t find it so pleasant (even though I know I should try it again). D.S & Durga´s Orris Root is all together a pleasant experience.


It is like wandering through underground passages, but not through caves, more like passages digged through soil and roots. Strange flowers and plants are decorating the passages walls. Flowers like the one above, but it is of course not a flower, but a mineral deposit you can find in caves, known as gypsum flowers.


The heart notes of Orris Root is really beautiful, but also amazing and complex. The different scent aspects of the root alternate to dominate. In the base the scent turns more powdery, soft and with discrete scent of both violet and iris. Orris Root has great lasting power on me, and the sillage is also quite strong considering I only dabbed it on.


It would be really fun and interesting to try Orris Root together with other perfumes with orris root as a dominating note. Do you have any favourite orris scent? And how should I manage to get closer to Iris Silver Mist?




Pic: John N Agnew

D.S and Durga - Beartrapper

Already the ancient greeks tried to humanise the animals. In Aesop´s (620 b.C-560 b.C) fables we can read moralizing stories with animals in the main characters. Animals are also main characters in some of the most loved fairytales as H.C Andersen´s "The ugly duckling" and some of the Grimm Brothers stoires as well. And we shouldn´t even mention Walt Disney and all the animals in his cartoons and moivies. Some other well knowned animlas we can find in C.S Lewis and his books about Narnia.


Yes,yes, yes I have probably mentioned Narnia before, but those books was really my biggest favourites during a part of my childhood. The sieblings that becomes kings and queens, the great lion Aslan, the mouse Rippipip, the faun Mr Tumnus, the horses, the donkey Pussel and Mr and Mrs Beaver with their cozy little beaver hut.


When trying the perfumes from D.S & Durga, Rosa Americana is the one capturing my attention at first, it´s beautiful and unique at onve. Cowboy Grass and Cowgirl Grass are free spirited scents with a lot of waste land, herbs and grasses in it. Beartrapper is a little more diffcult to come close. Even though I am wearing other perfumes in between, it stays in the back of my head and kind of gnawls! Beartrapper is reminding me of something, but still it is totally strange..


Beartrapper is marketed towards men, yes, it´s quite masculine, but I can´t stay away from it. Beartrapper is presented as originally being an old alchemy recepie used to trap bears. And, yes that says a lot about the scents character.


Beartrapper is jagged, strong, smokey, animalic, pungent, lingering and oh so homy. Yes, there is something really cozy and familiar about it.


All homes have thier own very special smell, home smell like home. When visiting your parents it´s also smell like home, but home a long time ago. Your closest friends and relatives homes also smell familiar and nice, but not really as home.


Beartrapper also smells like someones home... but who... where... no, I can´t really get it! But after thinking about it a coupple of days the coin drops. Ooooooh, it smells like it could have smelled at the Beavers hut in Narnia! If you just know how I imagine how it would be like to visting human-like animals in their homes when I was reading Narnia! Everything at the beavers home (and Mr Tumnus home as well) looks so homy, cozy and familiar but still with thing typical for beavers and fauns.


No, I can´t get enough of Beartrapper. It smells like being at a dear friends home, a dear friend that happens to be an animal. (Sorry for this, but I can´t really help where my association takes me!)


There is a fire crackling in the fireside, the smell of old well used wooden furniture, oiled leather, the dinner is soon to be ready, a stew with strange spices and herbs. The room is dimly lit, with the light from the fire and some oil lamps burning. It is murky, aromatic and so totally homy at the same time!


Yes, among the scents from D.S & Durga, Beartrapper manage to win my heart the most. It´s wonderful as a perfume, but imagine it... like a room scent or a scented candle. I would be first in line to buy it!


Beartrapper have a little more potent sillage, but it´s last about as long as the others from D.S & Durga, decent, but not that long. On the other hand, I don´t need to go around and smell like the beavers hut for such a long time. Oh, and Beartrapper is also my husbands favourite from D.S & Durga, so the precious drops in the little sample is down to half!







Pic: From Narnia, Beavers hut

D.S and Durga - Cowboy Grass

If Cowgirl Grass is the fresh, juicy aspects of grass, Cowboy Grass is the dry. Dry grass is hay, but it becomes so much more than hay in Cowboy Grass. Dried herbs, leather and dirt and some tar.


I find Cowboy Grass to be a distant relative to Tauer´s Lonestar memories, but easier to wear and like. D.S & Durga´s Cowboy Grass is a light masculine scent of an endless prairie with dry grass and other aromatic prairie weeds. Cowboy Grass is grass that dry that it´s crush when you rub it between your fingers and leave traces of a warm, comfy scent.


Even tough Cowgirld Grass has a richness in scent, Cowboy Grass is even richer, and also more complex without being hard to wear. Cowboy Grass make me feel both adventourus and calm at the same time. It´s atranquile scent, almost monotone, like travelling trough a vaste landscape that doesn´t change so mych. At least not on the syrface, like watching it from a car/train windor or by horse. But if you walk the same way, you will notice every little change.


The warm, aromatic scent of Cowboy Grass seem to have a little better lasting power than Cowgirl Grass on me, now when I try both of them side by side, the arm with Cowboy Grass is dominating after about 2 hours.


My husband has also tried Cowboy Grass, but on him, it stands in the shadow of Tauer´s Lonetstar Memories, but on the other hand he seem to have found a new favourite among D.S & Durga´s scents, Beartrapper.






Pic: David Koslowski, flickr

D.S and Durga - Cowgirl Grass

It´s hard to decide wich to start with, when it comes to D,S & Durga´s Cowgirl Grass and Cowboy Grass. To me, they´re both very far apart interprentions of the same thing, namely grass. They´re both what I would call unisex-scent, rather than masculine or feminine. Cowgirl Grass a little more at the feminine side and Cowboy Grass, well you can guess, a tiny bit masculin.


When trying Cowgirl Grass and Cowboy Grass I become curious to explore grass more thouroughly. I do not mean anything but ordinary grass that grows on the lawn or the meadow. Both of the Grass-varieties make me realise what complex scents there can be in just a tiny tuffet of grass.


Cowgirl Grass is the fresh, dewy kind of grass. Like lying on the back in dewy summer grass with the blue sky with little clouds on above. Butterflies and bumblebees flies around you and the smell of grass is strong, fresh, weedy and with some floral notes as well. It´s like I have tuffet iof grass in my hands and the smell is juicy green, almost as if I´ve got grass in my mouth. I am sure most of us have tried to eat grass some time?


When the scent develops it becomes stronger, dryer (but never dry) and warmer. De weak floral notes becomes a little stronger, but still, it´s a green scent with some floral, not the other way around. Cowgirl Grass is interesting, genuin but also comfy. Lazy and relaxed like a summer day, but also unique and personal. During the dry down Cowgirl Grass got a little more perfumed character, a little more feminine as well.


Cowgirl Grass has medium sillage and decent longvity, about 4 hours on me, even tough little traces of it last for about 6 hours.


I do like Cowgirld Grass, but I like Cowboy Grass even more.





Pic: home and garden

D.S and Durga - Rosa Americana

Do you like rosehip soup? I do not like it that much, but now and then I´ve got cravings for it, and then there isn´t anything that taste the same as rosehip soup.


D.S & Durga offers a very pleasant and challenging collection (or actually, several) of perfumes. Their homepage is beautiful, well made and makes at least me, very curious. Take a look at it: http://dsanddurga.com/


I´ve got a nice selection of their perfumes in samples, and haven´t tried all yet. I´ve liked all of them I´ve tried this far, but one in particular make me want to write about it at once. Namely, Rosa Americana.


D:S & Durga doesn´t reveal much about the notes in their perfumes, but in Rosa Americana at least one note is obvious, rose. On my skin, Rosa Americana become a rose scent beyond what is usual when it comes to roses in perfume. There is dark, spicy roses and fresh, natural roses, roses with gourmandnotes and there is Rosa Americana.


The first note I smell is the note of rose, somehwat fleeting but also a little sweet, but pretty soon it changes to a note of rosehip. Yes, there is a distinct note of rosehip, but also a little rose flower, as if the rose bush bopth have flowering roses and rosehips at the same time. The rosehip note become dominating, but all the time keeping at the light, airy side, never to sweet, to much or cloying (like a big bowl of hot rosehip soup when you´re not up to it!). On D.S & Durga´s homepage you can read about the smell surrounding the rose bush, rather then the rose bush itself and that is pretty accurate.


The rosehip note is still there, but get company by a light honey note, like rose honey, some similarities to turkish delight, but never pronounced, strong or sweet. Just a little lingering and soft. Sher yet beautiful. So now we got rosehip, honey and airyness and then comes some juicy tobacco. Like the smell of pipe tobbaco, but from some distant. Really beautiful, interesting and different, have never encountered anything like this actually! During the heart phase of the scent, the notes are changing and sometimes the honey are dominating but soon there after the tobacco is. Really, really nice and unique. At the same time a scent I think most would like, it never becomes to strange, odd or edgy.


Not until the basenotes anyway, the honey becomes oily and more like bees wax, but that is ok with me, it´s the note of moss that occurs that make Rosa Americana lost me a little. No there isn´t a heavy moss note, it´s kind of light, but still pronounced, and as you know by now, mossnote isn´t one of my favourites. Yes, Rosa Americana still smells good, but not as good as during the opening and heart. It is thanks to the opening and heart I will return to Rosa Americana.


Rosa America have decent longvity, bot not amazing and the sillage is a little below medium.


D.S & Durga´s perfumes isn´t the easiest to come by, but if you get a chanse to try some of their perfumes, don´t miss those lovely and different rebel-perfumes! I will write about some other D.S & Durga perfumes, so don´t miss that either!



Pic: anandasoup