Lonestar Memories by Tauer Perfumes

Do you appreciate scent because you identify with the scent and its image? Does a scent have the ability to create a memory outside one’s own experience?

Lonestar Memories by Tauer Perfumes asks and answers these questions for me in an interesting way. I found Lonestar Memories to be a wonderful surprise. I think it is Tauer's best creation yet. Lonestar Memories achieves greater refinement and complexity than his previous creations. It is also distinct from other leather fragrances on the market. I appreciate Lonestar Memories although I do not generally identify with the leather and woods genre of scent nor do I see myself in the image of the darling dimpled cowboy in the brochure.

I have never had problems conforming to gender appropriate dress or perfume. Labels leave a lot to be desired, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just say I am what they call high femme. Florals, orientals, saucy chypres; this is my perfume turf. You wouldn’t expect that a scent as butch as Lonestar Memories with a rough riding ranch hand on the brochure would be my thing. Labels and categories can be deceptive, and Lonestar Memories appeals to me in spite of the fact that I don’t exactly identify with the scent or its image.

I like it because of the atmosphere it evokes. Tauer has summoned me to the campfire with this scent, and that’s saying something. Even though I grew up in Alaska, I generally pick a trip to Paris over a campsite any day. Yet, Tauer works magic with this composition. The leather is like a weathered saddle, redolent of a vulnerable wild land, wet wind that carries the scent of the earth and the trees, salty bodies and hot ambery liquor by the fire. As the song goes ... "Cigareets and whisky and wild wild (wo)men!"

As rough as the cowboy’s life may be, there is a softness to the scent. Jasmine and geranium provide a humid floral relief from the dry austerity of a smoky birchtar leather and woods like cedar and sandalwood.

Clary sage, myrrh, tonka and vetiver, used in accords throughout, lend a contemplative air to the scent and aid its resemblance to buttery, aromatic leather. For me, the scent’s sensuality begins with the carrot seed and deepens with the emergence of the ciste (aka rockrose or labdanum). Carrot seed has the sensuality of dark freshly turned earth whereas ciste gives the scent an ambered animalic quality.

Lonestar Memories is a complex composition and it delivers multiple dimensions of the theme of leather and woods.

Lonestar Memories .. the perfume’s name brings me to the second question. Can a scent create a memory outside one’s own personal experience? My own response and an analogy to the success of the cinema seem to answer this question in the affirmative. Think of the recent release Brokeback Mountain, which inevitably comes to mind when you see the cowboy on Tauer’s new scent.

In my conservative republican town, the theaters were packed with straight couples who were enthralled with Brokeback Mountain. Ang Lee’s gorgeous imagery brought the story of these characters’ love that dared not speak its name to the hearts of many Americans who simultaneously belong to parties that would ban Gay marriage.

Beauty sways the heart. With Lonestar Memories, Andy Tauer has created a scent with the beauty to sway the heart to imagine memories of a life outside the personal experience of creator and the consumer. The scent is so lifelike, it summons the memory of this cowboy’s life on a vast prairie to me as if it were my own. I smell what he smelled and I almost think I feel what he must have felt, out there riding the range.

Moments later, I adjust the back of my ergonomic office chair and hear my West Highland Terriers lowing for chow.

“Get along little doggies!” I cry. I slip off my ostrich mules, pop another bonbon into my mouth, and get on with my day. But Lonestar Memories lingers on like a haunting and sentimental tune.

For more information about how to get Lonestar Memories, please visit Tauer Perfumes, where it will be available soon.