Bogue Maai: Dirty Cravings

by: Miguel Matos

Times are very hard for me and my wallet, as I seem to have found another expensive love. There was something that I had been craving but hadn't found yet in the market.Maai, the perfume from Italian niche brand Bogue, created by Antonio Gardoni, is the animalic paradise every perfume lover with a taste for the dirty has to smell once in their lives. And crave for it!

“Named after a term used in the martial art of Kendo that designates the relationship between space and time that separates/connects two opponents, this fragrance embraces measured juxtapositions and balanced precision.”—Bogue

I became interested in Maai after reading the reviews on Fragrantica. Some members were commenting on how this smelled like a vintage animalic chypre with aldehydes and oakmoss. I didn't need to read more—a magic word combination! Later on, one of the members, lovingthealien, reccomended Maai to me and I know he has a good nose for vintages and animalics. So I managed to get a sample and see what the hype was all about. When I finally got my samples, Maai wasn't exactly what I expected. But it's damn good, alright!

“MAAI is a perfume out of time, mixing the past with the future, a warm evocative and animalic chypre that merges classical aldehydes with a pungent green tuberose” —Bogue

I would agree with classifying Maai as a chypre, but not the classical one. Of course there is plenty of green and earthy oakmoss, but this scent is not as sparkling or sharp as the classic old chypre. It's dark character overshadows the fresh aspect. Even the aldehydes listed are very well blended into the composition and to my nose they don't impose themselves. So it's not an aldehydic scent to me. What it is, in my opinion, is an unclassified perfume. It smells fresh, a little green and balsamic at first sight (or smell, actually). It's not a bomb like I expected it to be. And it doesn't smell too vintage to my nose. I even began to think that I was smelling the wrong sample. But no, it is Maai. Speaking with Antonio Gardoni on Facebook, I told him I don't think this is an obvious vintage composition. He agreed, and vintage was not his intention to begin with.

What can I tell you about Maai? Well, you have to be a fan of dirty notes in order to enjoy this. Maai may start fresh and balsamic but it doesn't hide its intentions of dirty behavior. In a few seconds there is a strange move, as a typical base note jumps to the front. I identify it with the base Animalis, a classic accord from Synarome very popular in the past, consisting of civet, castoreum and musk. I don't know if there is Animalis in Maai, but the feeling is close. However, Maai plays the skank wink with subtleness. It's not as outrageous as, say Tabu, Shocking or La Nuit. And it plays the dirty side with a contemporary twist that makes it interesting without the punch in the face you can get with vintage civet bombs. The civet in Maai is present, but is it more like the carnal, dirty, maybe fecal note you can find sometimes in Atlas cedarwood, not really a civet stereotype. I suspect there is civetone in it, but also a very good Atlas cedarwood. Regarding the floral heart, it's an abstraction of flowers where tuberose dominates in its green aspect.

“The animalic soul of MAAI, comes from a perfectly blend mix of civet, castoreum and hyraceum with dried fruits, musk and deep sandalwood in the background. MAAI complexity feels effortless like the mind of a confident samurai appearing trough a cloud of white incense in a rainy day of autumn.”—Bogue

I know that animalics are coming back, we've seen it in the last edition of Esxence with the best example coming from Santi Burgas and his Oud de Burgas. From the recent past, Le Labo has this Oud 27, with a huge ton of civet and beastly oud. The famous blogger Barbara Herman is busy right now working on the composition of her future floral animalic vintage perfumes with Antoine Lie. But while Burgas and Le Labo play on the barnyard accord (and we still can't smell what Barbara is coming up with), Maai is for me the perfect example of how animalics can be updated and brought again into the 21st century without the common “old lady” designation lurking over.

Constantine Makovsky, Mermaids, 1879

On my skin, Maai doesn't project much but it lingers, moaning, purring, caressing my senses. It is a very carnal and sexual scent, but not a dangerous one. It smells of sex, sweat and dirty sheets. Warm bodies and aroused skin. But it does this in a soft way. There is still an elegant undertone even if everything is so openly dirty. It is like cuddling after a hot steamy session in a hotel in the middle of a damp forest. I feel like a sex beast in a tailored suit when I wear it. I shall stop this article here, for Maai got me thinking of naughty stuff and you don't want to read that.

Maai Notes
Tuberose, rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, civet, castoreum, hyraceum, dried fruits, sandalwood, oakmoss.