Mahora

Wow, wow, wow. My friend Sarah--most precious perfume pen pal!--sent me a vial of this vintage baby, and it blew my mind. At first application, I smelled a kind of complex mossy chypre scent that reminded me of Mitsouko--and then came a teensy touch of a minty, mentholated smell (not entirely unlike the anise in Mitsouko, L'Heure Bleue, and other early Guerlains), only that peculiar accord quickly revealed itself to be a very loud, very hyperrealistic tuberose. I happen to love tuberose, and it doesn't smell meaty or rancid or indolic to me, thank goodness--it's just a very assertive tuberose, a bit like if that peach in Mitsouko turned into a tuberose and then took over Tokyo. I do smell some almond blossom and jasmine, at which point Mahora reminds me the tiniest bit of YSL Cinéma, but that one is much sweeter and richer. This is more like a tuberose chypre, in the way that Diva and Knowing are rose chypres, except rose and tuberose are about as different as two flowers can be. I imagine that fans of Tubereuse criminelle and Fracas and other "in your face" tuberose frags would enjoy this, but this tuberose is, while clearly dominant, not the most interesting thing to me about Mahora. I don't even know how to describe Mahora, other than beautiful, potent, and weird. When I first put it on, I could smell the ylang-ylang and vetiver in the forefront, which reminded me of Ysatis and White Diamonds (pure parfum form, which seems to contain more ylang-ylang), but those are sweeter and less distinctive. I put on Mahora after my shower last night, and I got into bed, and then I didn't want to fall asleep because the fragrance kept changing. The drydown is the most beautiful part of all if you are fond of sandalwood. The drydown gives me a bit of the Samsara feeling, which is the most wonderful feeling of all: a clean, powdery, woody, balsamic scent bubble. It's a shame Guerlain discontinued Mahora, but maybe it was just too difficult to recreate now in accordance with IFRA regulations. If you are a fan of tuberose and chypres, track down a vintage bottle while they're still relatively affordable. And yes, I know that this is not classified as a chypre--it's a floral amber--but the bitter almond, the "green notes," and most of all the vetiver come through so strongly on my skin that I consider it chypresque at least. Thank you so much, Sarah, if you are reading this. You are my fragrance sherpa! I'm going to be huffing my inner elbows all day long.

I currently have a partial extrait bottle of this (it's even weirder than the EDP bottle, as a surprisingly heavy gold disc with a glass core and a dabber that slots in from the side). I suspect the loss of fragrance from this has been due to evaporation, but I digress. The extrait smells much the same as the EDP to my nose but perhaps marginally richer, I'll write my review here for the overall profile. Mahora (2000) I think was an attempt to reproduce the immense and intense success of its predecessor Samsara (1989), and as such follows in the yellow floral + sandalwood vein. Here there's a giant tuberose joining in on the party, and the sandalwood in the base has been tempered by some synthetic to make it even richer, more buttery and dare I say "harsher" - I get tons of white musk in this when I concentrate and sniff carefully. The unrelenting, frenzied nature of Mahora has been likened to bug spray, but it's actually closer to the smell of living bugs to my nose (metaphorically speaking). There's a heavy swarming-with-life quality to Mahora's floral-wood-vanilla, butter-and-sunscreen smell. To my mind it actually conjures the scent of a veteran survivor on a deserted tropical island, muscular, glistening with sweat and wearing threadbare grey rags (man or woman) or of a hive of rare tropical bees orgiastically blasting through grove after grove of tuberose flowers under a red-giant sun. Fruit is rotting about the place, but it only adds to the drug-like excitement. It's more ripe than fresh, but to my nose it's genuinely delicious from the first swab to the finish hours later. It's so quintessentially a Guerlain perfume: trashy to the extreme but pairing a giant floral onto a powdery vanilla dry down, and has the enormity and vortexesque quality of fragrances such as Chamade and Nahema. This is a beauty who is a bit camp, overdone, with too much makeup on, but thinks of herself as giving the full Venusian fantasy - and her adorable non-awareness of the almost ridiculousness of it all somehow makes it work, makes it fun. From heat to flowers I think Mahora is a masterpiece, and hope they will one day bring it back (as it was temporarily as Mayotte) for the fans to enjoy. I'd snap up several.

Guerlain mahora was a blindbuy for me,I doubted I would like it,cause classic white florals often tend to be cloying and boring for me,but I assumed this classic guerlain as a work of art,I love to buy classics,whether they are wearable or not,I appreciate their history,their art,their complexity,just as we enjoy an artistic painting Initial spray seemed like a great failure..I could smell a mishmash of white florals with a watery,green undertone which turned sourish on my skin,ughhh,maybe it was a blend of tuberose with citrus notes..I moved on and let it to settle down on my skin,as it's heart started to open,I started to love it,it wasn't sour anymore,I could smell a heady white floral bouquet,creamy indolic tuberose,some jasmine and neroli,some oily ylang-ylang with lots of almond blossom...almond,gave a lovely powdery edge to buttery florals,it's delicious bitterness doesn't let tuberose to become sweet in a flat boring way Unfortunately middle notes which I really love,don't last long and mahora dries down to a creamy tuberose,vanilla,sandalwood,soft and gorgeous,but not unique My overall feelings towards mahora is that I really like it,but I don't love it,if middle notes lasted longer it may become a love for me,it's a bright and very well balanced tuberose scent,there is a freshness in it that prevents it from becoming cloying.. So it's not cloying,too sweet or too oily as most tuberose scents,I don't find it a fragrance for older ages,indeed it's wearable for all age groups in the case that you like a tropical summery tuberose scent I expected mahora to be much more heady and strong,a sillage monster,but it's not..on my skin it's a soft,fresh tuberose scent that lingers for couple of hours as a skinscent,albeit sillage is really strong in first hour,when it's almondy and powdery but then sillage lowers I don't know of there was a reformulation to change a he sillage monster classic mahora to this soft,modern lotion like one I should mention that I love it's bottle,it's very vintage like and interesting,I expected to see such bottle in museum! ❤❤❤❤

As I write this, it's a foggy day in New England, and for all the talk that Mahora is a tropical, beachy fragrance sending wearers to distant, exotic locales, for me, it matches the mood of the brume outside. The tuberose actually suggests an unsettling chill, mentholated and beautifully wan, ghostly like the white flowers themselves, but immediately after it announces itself, there is a bitter green almond, spine-shivering, eyes peering. There is no Tiki bar, there are no paper mache umbrellas. Perhaps something under the surface rises that reminds one for a moment of banana daiquiri in the form of over-ripened ylang ylang. But this grows more than intoxicating, it is buttery blossoms bursting, soon decaying and rotting, enfolding and collapsing as mushrooms do when they are past maturity. This is a moodier creation than what Guerlain even anticipated, it's as if Mahora is a Frankenstein that refused to be caged in its assigned raison d'etre. It's dark and brooding, wearing a cloak in the thick fog, stealing spirits like a thief in the night. It has that same mysterious poignancy I get from Magie Noire; it's the same feeling I get when I listen to Terry Riley, a continuous dissonance resolving into the consonance and then the cycle repeats. Sweet facades concealing decaying interiors, cauldrons with who knows what floating in the bubbling brew, questions that probably shouldn't deserve answers, this is what I feel when wearing Mahora. Does this mean I enjoy wearing it? Absolutely. It's much like watching a film on the human condition: you squirm and perspire just a bit, but you feel satisfied, even liberated somewhat, by letting the truth unfold as the fog settles—like the vibrant white and yellow flowers destined for browning, decomposition, and departure. Exit scene.

Oh me I'm so afraid to comment about it because I have some crazy friends around here, who already hunt me... on hell I was joking I don't give a damn 😂. It's the only Guerlain perfume I LOVE, it is not necessarily a feminist perfume because it lacks a single note to be, verticality, even if it starts promisingly, the vanilla at the end hmm cuts it a bit, but I don't give a damn on that too. It's my guilty pleasure, I never understood why it wasn't appreciated to the true extent....actually, I know why, you need ability to understand this scent...ops I D I A😏... Returning to the perfume, indolic, nonindolic, it's a gem, it's a white perfume by definition, that tuberose smells DIVINE, is a combination of green with white and some orange, it's like making a bouquet of tuberose, with jasmine over which you throw a liter of orange juice, and finally grind ylang ylang over together with roasted walnuts in essence of vanilla. BEAUTIFUL! I can't say it's a gourmand because it doesn't arouse such a thing as lust, it is the kind of perfume that puts you in the a fragrance blanket and you feel the need to constantly smell your skin. It's hot too. It's the scent I wear on walks, usually in Prague because it seems to fit the atmosphere, but not only. Unfortunately, I only have two bottles of this vintage scent left, the perfume reintroduced in the exclusive collection although it is clearly the same, it seems to me that it does not have this orange so well defined and it is a pity. And yes, it gets you off your feet, if you spray a lot, it hit both you and those who pass by, so...drip it lightly.