Imagine that you are standing barefoot in front of a dense thicket of tropical trees, entwined with ivy and vines. The sun is already low. You turn away the broad leaves with your hands and hear the dull crunch of juicy stems. These thickets have not yet been touched, and they do not let you in very friendly, leaving warning traces of tart sap on your body. A cloud of birds, that had been hiding in the crowns of mango trees, rises from the rustling. You are close …
The tropical sun slides down the branches like a salamander, evaporating the remaining moisture from the ripe fruit. But time is running out. A jump, and you grab the sticky branch. Gathering the red-sided trophies in your hem and behind your back, you quickly slip back along the already familiar path. As if you had never been there.
Do you smell the scent rising from your chest? The smell of a wild mango warmed by your body. It’s not as refined as the ones on the supermarket shelves. And it’s not like the fruit cocktails and sweets you’ve tasted before. It is your trophy, your secret.
Notes: moist tropical greenery, wild orange, tangerine zest, Ylang Ylang, Indonesian mango, labdanum, pine needles, tree sap, warm resins, white musks.
A scent of mangroves, ripe fruits, juice up to your elbows, evening shadows of the dense jungle on your body. Just you, summer and the ocean in front of your eyes.
The fragrance opens with juicy leaves with orange freshness, followed by sweet wood sap with predatory flowers. Then ripe Indonesian mangoes with skin and flesh appear and nectar runs down the hands. Pressed close to the skin, the scent is tightened with labdanum liqueur and transformed into a fresh tropical bowl with pieces of fruit neatly arranged according to Feng Shui, and decorated with Ylang Ylang flowers.
Mango in the Bosom
From the author.
I have never been to Indonesia. What’s more, physically, I’ve never even been outside of the post-Soviet space. But does it matter? It’s just a body. In my mind, I have travelled the world a lot. Inside me is the Indonesian jungle, which sticks out from all the windows and cracks here and there. So thick that the oxygen makes me feel dizzy. So dense that they don’t let strangers in. And does it matter that they may not look like the ones on the map?
Maybe one day… No. One day, I will go on a journey to the prototype of my mango thickets. And then the thick tropical greenery will feel its roots inside me. In the meantime, I will warm the juicy fruits of the sun behind my bosom until they are fully ripe…
