Dzing!

I've never been much of a fan of sweet oriental perfumes. It's not that I don't care for the smell of vanilla--who doesn't love the smell of a sticky black vanilla bean?--but that personal fragrances based on those notes have a weird way of making something deep within me recoil and flinch away from them. Perhaps I was simply far too traumatized by the 1980s. I lived in New York City at the height of the loud orientals era, you see, and I commuted to work by subway. By RUSH HOUR subway. So as hesitant as I am to draw the ire of the perfumistas by admitting this, I was indeed one of those people who heaved a giant sigh of olfactory relief in the 1990s, when all of those new cool quiet "fresh and clean" aquatics finally replaced the deafeningly loud warm-spicy-yet-also-sickly-sweet-and-don't-forget-the-absolutely-*filthy*-come-hither-animalics! melange as the prevailing smell of the crowded morning subway car. I know, I know. I'm so sorry. Anyway, the point is that I didn't really expect to care all that much for Dzing! As far as I could tell, it looked to be a warm, spicy, candy-sweet, vanillic gourmandish yet also kinda fecal-filthy oriental. All of the things that I thought I didn't care for in a fragrance. But then I gave it a sniff. And then another. And then another...and another...and another... And then, only a week after my first whiff of Dzing!, I had somehow managed not only to use up my entire sample, but also to shell out more money than I thought I would ever be willing to pay for 100 mls, just to have a great big stonking bottle of this for my very own. I just couldn't help myself. I simply had to, you see, because this remarkably addictive fragrance smells like so many of the very best things on earth: of well-kept stables and tack rooms and warm sweet hay, of a healthy horse's neck when you nuzzle it after a good day's ride and the way that your palms smell after that same day of riding (the leather of the reins combining with your sweat and the fine fresh horse sweat to make something new and strange out of the once-familiar skin-smell of your own two hands). It smells of fresh-cut pine boards, ancient varnish, the tasty salicylated green inner layer of black birch bark; of sarsaparilla and sealing wax; of the inside of a lacquered Chinese false-bottomed box. It's the smell of schoolbook covers made from brown paper grocery bags and decorated with thick and redolent permanent markers, and of the enormous cardboard refrigerator box your parents let you play in when you were very small. It's all of the good smells of childhood and none of the bad: it's fatwood and toffee and that fried dough with powdered sugar they sell at the state fair. It's that funny brown benzoin your grandmother once dabbed on your scraped knee to make a bandaid stick better -- and it's also the weirdly rubbery old bandaid itself. It's dusty boxes in the attic, a forgotten cake of rosin found inside a velvet-lined antique violin case, shelves upon shelves of old used books, the fur behind the ears of a sun-warmed purring cat... It's all of these olfactory memories at once, and yet it doesn't...quite...match any one of them perfectly. It somehow manages to be both intensely allusive and profoundly nostalgic, while never quite settling on any single precise referent. And in the end, of course, like all the best fragrances, Dzing! smells like nothing but its own unique self. I am absolutely, head-over-heels in love with this fragrance, but the thing is, I can also recognize that many of the reasons others have given for finding it gross are pretty much accurate. There *is* a fecal aspect to the smell of even the best-maintained stable, and while I may find that tang of well-aged horse manure to be not only inoffensive but even actively enjoyable, I can certainly understand why someone else might be violently averse to the idea of deliberately scenting themselves with it. Cat fur, similarly, is not a smell that everyone enjoys, nor is attic dust, and I am sure that there are many for whom the words "horse sweat" do not precisely ring out as a positive endorsement of a ladies' perfume (especially since, as my mother always told me, while horses are lucky enough to be permitted to sweat, and gentlemen may perspire, ladies must never do anything more than "glow"). And though I've always loved the turpentinic smell of rosin, I've never heard of anyone rubbing it all over themselves in a futile attempt at budget DIY perfumery -- unlike, say, vanilla extract from the kitchen, which very many young people do try to use in just that way. So yeah, I get what others might find disgusting about Dzing!. Honestly, I really, really do get it. But to me, it is just hauntingly beautiful.

Descriptions of this perfume are so wild and varied that I've had it on my radar for years. So once I finally got a sample, it had a lot to live up to. I didn't really know what to make of this at first, because I think I was a little confused. The circus backstory and abundance of sweet notes made me expect something like Angel, but I don't get much in the realm of sweetness. The leather is definitely more prominent than anything else, but it's a funky, smoky leather. That might make it sound a little macho and intimidating, but there's nothing scary about this. Dzing is cozy as hell. I didn't know how wearable this was at first, but I find myself reaching for this sample a lot. I completely get the hype. This is a really unique perfume, but it's not at all as weird as people say it is. I don't smell the inside of a circus, but I can perfectly picture the autumnal countryside where it's happening, crunchy leaves and all. It smells like a childhood drive to the exurbs for seasonal activities like moonlit hay rides and haunted houses. There's something a little scary about being in the middle of nowhere on a dark night, because you have no idea how far you are from home, or how you got there. Despite your nerves, your family's right there, and they're having fun with you, so it's an exciting kind of scary. You're learning how it feels to be outside of city limits, and to go on an adventure with people you love. It makes you look forward to the independence of getting older, but you're having a great time just being a kid, especially on nights like this. You have a fun grandpa who makes you feel smart and special, and he's always happy to do kid stuff with you. He smells like tobacco and dusty books, and you always take an extra deep inhale when you hug him. This is just so evocative and comfortable. It smells old, but in this endearing, lived-in way, exactly how you'd want something to smell old. It smells like a safe, eccentric older man who will tell you great stories if you ask him. It also smells like walking into the kind of antique bookstores that used to feel ordinary enough, but are now so threatened by late capitalism that even seeing one feels like urgently good news. It makes me understand why people want to smell like old books. It feels like it's motivated by a desire to remember a past where the future felt safe, and guaranteed. Look at all these old things that survived, because people loved and protected them. Dzing doesn’t evolve much on my skin, and I can't really find the sweet notes, but where it lands is so nice that I don’t care. I can imagine this being wearable all year, but the comfort I feel wearing this is so perfect for the cold seasons. It smells like happy memories that aren’t even necessarily mine, but it makes me feel loved and happy to be alive. These are very lonely times, so I think it's really beautiful that a perfume can conjure up that kind of emotional warmth. I imagine I’ll be reaching for this a lot in the next several months.

Beautiful. Love at first sniff. I will just confirm what others have already said: it's a (pretty clean) cowshed (or call it as you want, a zoo or circus cage) with a hint of sweetness in the background. This fragrance is quite linear, but unique. The opening is an slightly animalistic musk, leaning slightly masculine. That said, I agree with @suskind66 that this is NOT a challenging fragrance, and should please pretty much anyone who doesn't limit her/his shopping habits to generic mass-appealing fragrances. There is NO skanky/urine note (i.e. YSL Kouros, Serge Lutens Muscs Koublai Khan or Le Labo Oud 27). Also, NO fecal/dung note like in some indian oud containing fragrances (i.e. Frederic Malle The Night). Sure, it has a cowshed vibe, but a very clean one. After 15/30min, the drydown opens on a leather note, supported by a nearly feminine floral background (I would have bet on turkish rose, but it's not listed in the pyramid). It will stay pretty linear until the end (not a criticism). That said the "cotton candy" and "candy apple" hype is a pure marketing thing to tell the circus story. Honestly, on my skin I cannot perceive and describe these notes more precisely than "florals with a light gourmand note". Overall a quite perfect unisex fragrance (ok... maybe 51% feminine/ 49% masculine... but as a man I love it, despite I am not the metrosexual type at all) This is a unique and beautiful creation, the definition of niche perfumery (in terms of scent). That said I cannot ignore a major drawback here: this one has just a soft projection in the early opening, and then settles as a skin scent shortly after. Because of that, it misses the "masterpiece title", but thanks to that, this is the only animalic musk fragrance I know that could be worn at work. It's definitely a love for me and would recommend getting a decant, or possibly a full bottle, but only if you can find it discounted (I blind bought mine new at less than $50 for 100ml). While I love the scent, personnally I would not have paid full retail price given the poor performance. Best for mildly cold/warm weather days (Spring/Fall), for both women (20+) and men(30+). (women may also try to wear this one in warmer evenings, imo) Merci Madame Giacobetti (for the unique scent - not the performance!) Edit: I acquired Aperture by Ulrich Lang a year later or so,and the similarities between these two are obvious and strong. Basically Aperture is mostly the heart stage of Dzing with additional aldehydes in the top and ambergris in the base, keeping it colder. As opposed to Dzing!, that will round the edge of the musk with some sweetness in the background.

What a wily minx this creature is; I have read and listened to many of the epithets attributing sources as diverse as dung, old books, the circus, an evening in the tropics and sawdust, and with my curiosity aroused by such diverse opinions I got a decant from someone with the dark green bottle. Everyone raves about the old bottle with the lady and tiger but I had to make do, and boy was I not disappointed. Dzing! for me is onomatopoeiacally perfect, because a personal experience of running at night through humid tropical nature reserves literally comes Dzinging back to me - my nostrils are clear from heavy breathing, and the air is viscous with the scent of the night-blooming Indian Pulai tree and an overripe, fecund odour of trampled fallen flowers and fruit underfoot. It is a strangely spicy, insolent smell, too pointed to be purely of plant origin, and I reckon only vegetal decomposition on the steaming equator can smell quite like that. Amazingly, apart from the saffron note, there is no other flower officially listed, and yet, this begins for me not with leather, but with a wonderful narcotic white floral with a veil of nutmeg and possibly pandan leaf floating over it, giving it a surprisingly tantalising Southeast-asian gourmand quality, and I can only marvel at the alchemical transmutation going on with the ingredients in Dzing! To bring this about. This mellows down after maybe an hour or so in the crook of my arm (or sooner on my wrist) to a comforting savoury buttery leather, like being ensconced in a worn button-back armchair frequently occupied by a handsome man (or perhaps a woman) with a habit of lounging about, naked and unshowered, skin in direct contact with the leather. In an ideal world this is what humans might naturally smell like; perhaps our loved ones already do in a way... I cannot help but think of the scene in Tom Ford’s A Single Man where George, the grieving English professor puts his head through a stranger’s car window to wistfully inhale the fragrance of her smooth fox terrier, a comforting reminder of his own deceased pet, which he rhapsodises, ‘smell like buttered toast’. The fact that that line or scene was never actually in Isherwood’s original novel, and that Ford’s own fox terriers starred in the movie itself, bestows the ‘buttered toast’ quote with a rather powerful intimate significance.

Joyous leather! Have you never smelled leather that’s full of joy, fun, and happiness? Smell Dzing!. In terms of structure and high-level characteristics, Dzing! is actually fairly routine. It wasn’t the first put a fruit note over leather, and it wasn’t the first - even of that aforementioned set - to go down a slightly sweet faux-gourmand route either. Dzing! stands out amongst the pack by paying attention to the details that make the creative brief come to light, that is the smell of a circus. The opening, at least for me, is an instant smile. Red Washington apples flecked with caramel overlaying black polished leather. Of course in literary description that doesn’t sound like the type of thing that should work but olfactorily it works brilliantly - and has in many forms before Dzing!. It’s happy and it’s fun thanks to the tastefully fruity and sweet apple and caramel but the leather lends itself to the message as well by being properly leathery animalic but far from any sort of skank-fest. As the perfume evolves it becomes clearer as to why: Giacobetti performed a neat circus trick by linking the leather over the top over animalic musks, vanilla, and bright and slightly smoky woods - not placing the leather in the base. Without a funky castoreum or styrax or birch smoke base feeding the leather note, Dzing! manages to give a sweet circus treat closure that reminds me of powder-sugar sprinkled fried funnel cakes and cotton candy. The end of the perfume is not nearly as sweet as those descriptions would lead to you think, it’s actually quite understated and tasteful. This should come as no surprise since Giacobetti is the queen of quiet, finely detailed yet powerful-statement perfumes. I’m a sucker for a great leather perfume, as any of you who have followed me for some time are well aware - and I own a lot of them. Despite its conventional structure it’s those fine details Giacobetti pays attention to that call-back Dzing! to my mind time and time again when I think about the great leather perfumes of the last 30 odd or so years. It’s just such a shame it’s gone... much like circuses, I suppose. Though circuses disappeared for well-principled reasons. Dzing! disappeared because... well... you’d have to ask Puig and L’AP but their reasons are likely to be less principled.

One could say that Dzing! hails from the golden age of "niche," when it finally started to rise from the underground and could be found on (high-end) department store counters and boutiques. One could be dazzled by the array of unusual brands and unprecedented concepts in perfume, as if a portal to a new dimension had been opened. Dzing! was a concept, a big concept, alluding to the atmosphere of a circus, down to the ambient aromas given off by the animal performers. Sadly, nowadays my mind goes right to the abuse and trauma these animals often would endure, but I will set that aside because, as usual, I like to separate myself somewhat from concept and focus on what it feels and evoke for me. Furry creatures mingling and jostling, rawhide, a red barn, and animal husbandry, a leather that has not been heavily treated by the tannery. Heavy cresols twenty minutes in remind me of paperwhite narcissus, a polarizing floral aroma, horsey-horsey, a horse is a horse of course horsey but also sweet and velvety. Growing smokier and mildly toffee-sweet over time; the toffee accord actually reminds me of the smell of opoponax absolute, even though the note is not listed here. Remember: follow your nose! The notes breakdown is a guide, not orthodoxy. So, the feeling grows more resinous sweet, with just a bit of candy floss "spin spin sugar" (queue the Sneaker Pimps dance remix). Further as it alights the skin, Dzing! feels like old wooden halls, ancient tomes, rubber erasers and pencil shavings, and musk lollies. There is a cabinet of curiosities, an antique bottle of linseed oil where you can still detect its long aged and evaporated remains, a dusty old pony figurine, matchbooks, and thimbles. In a library, a handsome working class man with reading glasses and a square jaw, glances over, gives you the "glad eye." You smell his perspiration and English Leather. Maybe this three-ring circus is a metaphor for some other frenzied affair...

I had a sample of this a while back and didn't get the chance to fully test it. I liked it enough from the sample to be excited about a bottle for sale on Ebay at a great price, and I've been wearing it for the past three days. What a beautiful perfume for Autumn. It's now overtaken my previous Autumn favourite Cuir Fetiche. Dzing! is soft, complex, the leather is like the inside of worn suede gloves, the touch of toffee and apple never too sweet. There's a subtle dry-down of what feels like ambergris (salty/sweet, animalic but not too dirty), and a touch of spice that I experience as ginger, but others interpret as cinnamon. For those who're concerned about sllage or strength, if you give a generous spray it's definitely noticable. I've now had two people comment on this spontaneously in as many days. One woman said 'it smells like a sort of cinnamon hookah pipe', another man thought it smelled like jasmine and leather. Both loved it. I love it! Perfumes fall into families that echo each other's mood while being distinct to themselves, so I'd say if you like L'Air de Rien but find it too cow dung-ish, Dzing! is perfect. If you like Bulgari Black but find its synthetic rubber a litle harsh, you'll like the softer sweet leather feel of Dzing. Cuir Fetiche is a less well known perfume, but where I love it's amber/ambergris/suede floral blend, I find Dzing softer and more contemporary. Dzing is incredibly easy to wear, soft yet subtly noticable, sophisticated yet relaxed, ageless, warm and sensual. Unless you're strictly into clean florals, or prefer soemthing with a powerful sillage, you really should give this a try. It's up there in my favourite 'must haves' now. It's love, but the kind of love that's easy and demands nothing in return. Olivia Giacobetti - genius!

With the ding from behind the curtain! With a bang, a fluffy animal sprang out of the tent. People cheered. This...this tastes so good! My dad said he thought of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus show that was popular in his childhood. Marshmallows...and also, the colorful ad pages of the magazines, with bright and rough print. The yellow, pink, and blue balls spin and jump, seemingly childish, but satisfying you and me as children. Should be feline fur, but you can smell ginger. Very good leather. Olivia Giacobetti took a different approach. Dzing!'s sense of animality is unobtrusive, and it controls the warm, fishy and other characteristics of big cats to a certain extent, which is very good. It retains the characteristics without making me feel sick. Everyone praised it as extraordinary. For a long time, the most difficult thing for niche perfumes to achieve perfection is how to balance the preferences of the public and personalization. Olivia Giacobetti caught this very well. So good, Dzing! Hit my heart with precision. After smelling the top note, I can't help but look forward to more surprises. How amazing! Dzing! is unique because of its fun. There is no way I could find such creative and good work today. It brought me an indescribably moving and joyful afternoon. Hereby solemnly declare: I love Dzing! The caramel sweetness is slowly released with the salty musk and woody notes, and the smell blends seamlessly. The key to Dzing's richness and deliciousness is vanilla. If it is like paper, I think it is recycled paper made from animal waste. You can't imagine this magical combination without actually smelling Dzing. L’Artisan Parfumeur doesn’t understand, it’s an honor to have Dzing. Now, L'Artisan Parfumeur has stopped producing masterpieces.

was going through my perfume collection and found dzing! way in the back. i have a small older bottle with the tiger. i never actually wore this out bc i was scared of the challenge. every time i let friends smell it the reaction was always unpleasant. me, i kinda liked the way it smelled but i acknowledge its pretty different. i smelled dzing in a later reformulation. that one was much tamer, kinda spicier, far less leather musk animal. and tbh i kinda liked it bc it seemed easier. it was still dzing but not as wild as the older formula i have. analyzing the perfume now i smell: in passing (like if smelling this on someone passing by) warm, fuzzy ambery, then almost a vague cherry leather. intriguing. studying the way it smells on paper its still warm fuzzy ambery and definite leather but there is caramel, chocolate. the leather has a darkness, some called it dung and i can see that but i read it as more like a leather boot. i swear im getting a tart green apple cutting through. caramel apple. its there and i believe that was one of the original's notes. overall this is not an ordinary perfume. not mainstream. lots of depth. if i smelled this on someone i was standing around i would be totally intrigued. its not a strange smell, i would definitely think its perfume. there is something captivating about dzing! it smells really good but the animal and leather is ever so slightly off putting but not totally. i think that aspect is what makes this something i keep coming back to. like slight repulsion but also delicious and addicting. welp sadly i see this is discontinued. was hoping to get a newer bottle to wear while this older one lives on in my dwindling collection. shame bc now i really want to wear this out .

this is a beautiful perfume...i randomly bought it in TKMaxx from a massive pile of Artisan perfumes. arrrrgh. i think "i have to get one...which one? go for the one with the circus lady on the logo." we live surrounded by countryside in Cumbria on the edge of the English Lake District...and this actually smells a lot like Kendal. we don't have many circuses, but we have street art festivals and markets and a massive Carnegie library... i smell ghostly tannerys of past. the straw from the parade of farm animals that made their way down highgate, back in the day....the sweet aroma of Romneys. the snuff factories...Dzing is my home town and i love it. it wears like a lovely feminine perfume. sweet vanilla base... i love flicking through library books. i bought a couple of ex-library books recently from Amazon...i do smell this, yes i do. the sweetness of the pages. leather, salty leather...the reason why dogs and kids like to chew it. mmmmm. then suddenly, i remember playing as a kid in a massive open barn of bails of hay. we climbed to the top...(where were the adults?) and then one of us disappeared!!! there was a muffled noise...she was down at the bottom having slipped through about 15ft of bails to land somewhere else the other side. the game lasted for hours and i am pleased none of us suffocated or got crushed. in the days when we didn't wear car seat belts either. (oh to be a 70's liberal parent!) so child safety, leather dog chews, kendal mint cake and hay aside....this is a beautiful perfume. i love the whiff of this. everyone should try Dzing! even if just for the silly name.

So I bit the bullet and blind bought Dzing!... I was super excited to try it on, and couldn't wait to give it a blast. My first small spray on my forearm was promising... there was an initial wet hit, which I couldn't describe at that moment, and pretty soon after the dry down, I sensed that I might be wearing Timbuktu layered with Dzongkha. Well - it needed a proper wearing, and I had to wait. So a few days later, I was getting ready for the school run, and wandered over to my perfumes... I spied Dzing! and decided to try it then. I applied quite liberally to my arms, got dressed and headed to the kitchen for breakfast. The next 20 mins were a blur - eating and then rushing around at 90 mph trying to get kids out of the house. As I was about to leave, my youngest (12 yrs) said "dad, it smells of pee pee in the kitchen... cat pee". I offered her my arm... and yes - it was the Dzing! Literally five minutes later, my girlfriend arrived. But like me, she couldn't smell pee. My day was a bit too busy to be able to take stock of Dzing!'s performance, but I recall that I still sensed that Dzing! must be somehow related to Timbuktu and Dzongkha. And Dzing! remained a decent skin scent for hours - right into the evening. Very very enjoyable. So overall, I LOVED wearing Dzing! and am looking forward to seeing how it changes as I get to know it better.

You really can’t spray Dzing! with serious face of perfume-analytic, who is going to “dispel a common illusion” that Dzing! is a masterpiece. There is nothing to believe or disbelieve, to explode or to debunk. Dzing! is Dzing! just like curcus is circus. It does has all stages and performances, and Olivia Giacobetti is a main illusionist in it. Elephant’s droppings been mentioned plenty of times, right?.. Beautiful saddle leather and horse sweat...so what?.. The good thing with Dzing!, that to the moment you stop laughing after first 5-10 minutes of applying, been through whole childhood ridiculous episodes, it is becoming sweetly-mellow-caramel- wearable and enjoyable. And you sort of missing those first animalic notes, because you want to be surprised and want to laugh again. The base is really nice – wood with tonka and saffron , so charismatic and charming and cute. It reminds me of one of my friend from childhood, who’s jokes were unbearable to me at that time and who’s behaviour was driving me nuts, yet if he would go away for a week, I would miss him badly and all people would seem boring and plain. I Am simply glad, that entertaining Dzing! exists.

Dzing! is an odd name for an odd perfume...actually this isn't really a perfume. It's more like a scent that a body produces on its own. I get a slightly dirty musk and leather covered by a sheer layer of not-very-sweet caramel. For me, I get zero candy apple, cotton candy, or toffee. There is something zoo-like about this though. I smell hay and that animalic base makes me think of two leopards walking past each other, their furs grazing as they pass. I blind bought a 100ml bottle of this for a good price, the old bottle with the lady and the tiger. The first spritz is horrible. I thought I had made a big mistake, but after a few tries, I do really like this. It is a smell that I have come to crave sometimes. Though oddly pleasant, Dzing! is far from a crowd-pleaser. It is kind of difficult to wear too, because there is no occasion, where I think, 'Hey, I should wear that.' Whatever you do, do not judge this by the initial spray. It's bad, but the longer it wears, the nicer it gets...almost pretty. Although, it is questionable if the people around you will think that. Nevertheless, if you are adventurous and you like 'em interesting, this is good stuff.

Wearing this baby after a few days of wearing what I would consider “aspirational” scents - the perfumes of a woman who is much more composed, better dressed and more sophisticated than I am. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but today with the chill I wanted something a little closer, something that feels a little more in line with *me* as I am. Enter Dzing! Back in ‘06/07 when I began reading perfume blogs and nurturing an interest in perfume (despite the lack of budget), I remember many of those bloggers singing the praises of this little weirdo in a bottle. Some number of years later I got my hands on a bottle. And given the fact that it’s discontinued, the remaining half of it is precious to me. Dzing! opens on me with a leather that sometimes smells a little rubbery (like bandaids) and with a fruity edge that I wouldn’t have ever guessed was apple. Within a half hour later the rubber of the leather subsides and I’m left cuddling with a fuzzy animal on a leather couch, in a rustic wooden cabin with a cup of ginger tea nearby. It’s sweet, but not a gourmand. I don’t get the crack of whips, nothing fecal here, just spiced coziness.

Dzing! is an incredible weirdo that I discovered early into my foray into niche and had forgotten about since draining a large decant years ago. News that it was maybe being discontinued (and seeing some aspirational pricing on eBay) led me to purchasing a couple of bottles that I found for what seemed to be reasonable (i.e. normal L'Artisan) prices. It's just as I remembered it and better--an intriguing mix of sweet vanilla and coumarin with a hint of caramel and some spices, dusty/woody haylike and cedar-ey notes, and an animalic/barnyardy leather. It manages to be approachable in my book while still being wholly unconventional. It scratches a similar itch that the Musc Ravageur ilk scratch--that is MR, Helmut Lang, Le Labo Labdanum--while still having a somewhat airy texture as all L'Artisans seem to have. Smelling the original and newest bottles side by side, they are definitely still the same basic, lovely smell. The leather in the older one feels more genuinely leathery, but I would happily wear either.

Love...but it’s a journey. The opening (apart from the nose-singing blast of alcohol) is plastic and cardboard. Then it’s all about the barnyard. Hay, humid skin, edging towards fecal. It smells like Eau de Zoo for the first hour. Interesting, but not what I want to smell like. Eventually, the animals are back in their enclosures and their cages cleaned and what’s left is spicy, unwashed, lived-in skin. It reminds me of L’air de Rien by Miller Harris. The thick and oily smell of unwashed hair. It’s the smell of the bed, the sheets, balmy skin after a lazy weekend with your new lover. Lovely gingery musk. I’ve noticed that the barnyard effect seems less apparent with successive wears. Also, I accidentally wore this over Bulgari Black and the result was spectacular. The longevity and projection were greatly improved. Overall, I love this but I see how this would be polarizing. It’s not as leathery (on me) as I had hoped and the longevity is just average. But it is unique and extremely well balanced.

Circus?? Wildly animalic? Toothachingly sweet? Hm, I don't get that. But I do get a lot of fine leather and a barn/stable smell with a beautiful living animal in it. Probably horse. Then, there is a bit of caramel laced with ginger and saffron. People call this really weird or unique- I don't agree at all! It's very elegant. Reminds me of the sort of woman that wears cream flowy silk blouses but quietly approachable. The leather is in it through out the progression but it's a little sweet and still has that leathery tang or... Dzing! It's more suede than rough leather. It very much in the same vein as Chanel Cuir de Russie but (dare I say it) I think this one is lovelier. Not sure of the current version. With mentions of "pumpkin spice", it must be completely different. It's an Olivia Giacobetti creation after all - can you imagine her creating "pumpkin spice"? I don't think so. I have the version with the lady riding a tiger on the label, and it's full bottle worthy.

Edited 12/29/23 - This is my second time around with Dzing! and I have thoughts. The first 15 minutes for me are skanky almost to the point of revulsion for me. This is definitely the most fecal fragrance I would ever own, and only because it really is an oddball masterpiece. After the first 15 minutes it’s heavenly. I get caramel, vintage leather, cotton candy, and barnyard. It is *almost* gourmand, but not quite. Having grown up in NYC, I don’t have many childhood scent memories of the circus or horses, but now that I’m a mother, Dzing! brings to my mind spilled kettle corn, unwashed children, and petting zoo. Weirdly comforting in a way that I can’t stop sniffing. Best worn in the cold, imho. I feel like if you dig quirky or slightly naughty vintage scents without florals, you might love this. Edited 11/22/23 - I finally have Dzing! back in my possession, and I'm not letting her go again! I'll follow up here with a more detailed review after getting reacquainted.

What a delightful little illusionist this scent is. Dzing starts with a walk down the midway with a blast of sawdust and stables, and what my brain reads distinctly as an idealized version of elephant dung. At about the 15 minute mark, the muskiness begins to fade, and there are distinct wafts of caramel apples, and large a fluffy pile of pink cotton candy and fizzy soda. To prevent toothache from the sudden influx of sugar, the middle section is a slightly sweaty saddle leather, bridging the transition from that distinctly animal top section and all of the concession stand treats. At about 90 minutes, the drydown starts and it's all baled hay and fresh cut summer grass, clutching your hard won midway teddy bear in sticky hands. It is rare for a perfume to have such a well developed sense of wonder and humor, and I can't help but smile every time I put this on. This certainly isn't for everyone, but I personally would love running away with this particular circus.

Dzing! went the strings of my heart. Ba-dum-bum. Seriously, this is really good. Cardboard smells lovely, and as we've all heard, this one smells like cardboard. It's different and very very pleasant. I am always on the hunt for scents that allude to books or libraries and despite many overt, failed attempts to develop fragrances on this theme, Dzing! right now is the only one that I think succeeds. I get the paper, and the leather of the book cover... a nostalgic, evocative smell for anyone who is or has ever been a bookworm. It's only missing resin/glue, and then anything about the library itself (dusty, stone, smoky, etc.). But until there's a perfect library fragrance, I am so happy that we have Dzing!, which is as artfully composed as some of the other wonderful perfumes in this line. Buy it for the bibliophile in your life, or yourself: you'll be pleased. p.s. I also love love that this perfume "reads" as both library and circus at the same time.