Reviews of MAAI by Bogue Profumo

Maai opens with mentholated tuberose and smoked ham. Fascinating but not pleasant, this phase lasts for over an hour before settling into a nice floral animalic. The artistry and quality of ingredients are apparent. I am glad to have tried it but did not blossom with my skin chemistry apparently.

Note: unfortunately what I sampled is the reformulation. I wish i could have experienced the first iteration which is what created such a response from people.

A great bold old fashioned fragrance, but a recent bottle smelled less of oakmoss and more feminine. I prefer my older sample. The current example reminds me of Salome papillon.

Dancing closely with a lithe, muscular man, who knew how to make every movement guided and sensual, lightly touching his cheek against mine, under the deco glass and metal roof of a turn of the century dance hall in the Caribbean. One could easily mistake the suspension of time in that absolutely nurtured, followed, tender alignment of movement for a coup de foudre, quickening against the throbbing of the music, the warming of our skin. The dance partner's clean, comforting scent, with vivid, almost sour elements of green, and an edge of civety, incensey musk, makes you lean closer to his neck. You don't need to dance at all, he dances to make your latent rhythm come to life. But this is too close. The gleam of his eyes looking questioningly into yours is both hypnotic and alarming. You need to breathe. You laugh, and slow, and thank him as you break away from that masterful, graceful embrace. I couldn't believe, on sniffing Maai on a test strip, that one of the most intimate if fleeting moments of my life was unfurling like a film from the notes.

MAAI is a perfume I had to date many times before falling for it. Hard. Not because it's challenging, not at all. But because throughout the years, it has suffered so many variations from batch to batch that one could easily decide to collect and purchase every single iteration, as to me, they are all different and tell a different story. There is not one MAAI perfume. There is a story about this idea of a perfume called MAAI. It is an ongoing story that keeps unfolding, and trust me, it has traveled a long way to be where it is now.

The original iteration makes me think of French Budoirs, vintage green chypres, and old-school glamour. I would classify it as a Green-Floral Chypre. It opens up with a blast of icy green aldehydes and camphorous clouds. The heart unveils white florals with tuberose leading the way. It exploits the green facets of the flower. The base is loaded with civet and plenty of moss.

The second iteration, I only have a sample of, and I believe it's the standard bottle with a grey light cap. It follows the same structure as the original, yet I get a more prominent soapiness in the heart, and the civet in the base is significantly toned down.

The latest version has the same bottle design as the previous one, but the cap is dark grey. Here, the perfume takes a significant turn from a green floral chypre toward a full-on Oriental perfume that makes me think of a Harem. The green, icy opening is replaced by a smoky cloud of resins where florals seem to melt and turn into a stream of desire. I detect an increased usage of woods like cedar and vetiver while the civet is now overshadowed by leathery, sweet, and smoky castoreum that Antonio has proven time and time again not only that he loves but that he also knows how to use well. The moss, the florals, and the greens are all swallowed by this heavy flow of glowing, warm resins. Vintage Bal à Versailles comes to mind with modern MAAI. That being said, I love both directions. The original as well as the latest iteration. They are my favorites. The in-between version is just a bit too shy for my tastes. They are worth owning as they are different. I might prefer the current version overall due to my love for Oriental compositions. Yet it is hard to beat the original MAAI when thinking of great modern chypres, as not many can rival its grandeur.

MAAI. A story about French boudoirs, icy florals, piercing green shades and velvety mosses, Oriental Harems, Frankincense smoke, warm thick resins, and of course, LOADS of animalics. And the story goes on.

IG:@memory.of.scents

I got a sample of this about 8 years ago and have tested it again. This just stinks. And not in a good way. Dior Leather Oud is one of two scents I would consider signature scents while most think it's too dirty. I can't imagine wanting to smell like this. The best thing I can say is that Maai is what Kouros should have been.

It greets me with a fresh labdanum, which is underscored by a peachy fruitiness and a smooth and bright incense, that is neither haughty nor ceremonious - reminding me of the sun-filled moments in the majestic brightness of Uppsala'a Cathedral. An ylang-ylang develops into another main player; it is trim and neither rich nor creamy. A lot of the brightness is due to backbone of sparkling aldehydes that permeate the whole.

A more floral phase is develops a bit later, with a strong green and light-filled tuberose very notable; this is not very waxy, only has a slightly resinous touch, and presents ass less creamy again that other versions of it in other olfactory products. A green jasmine as well as a rose note are joining in, with the rose a bit nonspecific on me; the jasmine grows into a more significant contributor to the mix.

Spicier components of this creation include a mildly crisp castoreum, which pairs with a nice and gently edgy high-quality oakmoss, which starts out timidly, but then develops to full glory only many hours later, and then with a slightly civety undercurrent. Hints of a slightly leathery undertone transiently appear, but is is a sandalwood that gradually makes itself known in the mix and that adds a woody feeling to the whole. By now the resinous aroma expresses nigh-campherous characteristics at times, and it becomes stronger towards the end instilling a bit more sweetness in the final stages. These stages are not neatly separated, but they merge into one another over time.

I get moderate sillage, excellent projection, and eight hours of longevity on my skin.

This is an unusual scent for warm autumn days in its unconventional combination of various disparate aspects of the perfumer's tool kit. It is spicy and has lots of incense, but it is bright too; it uses florals but also animalic touches - and it is quite original in blending and structuring. On the downside some of its components are a tad generic, and in the wave of numerous ingredients cannot full develop their characteristics or are overwhelmed by others - the rose especially on me - but some of very good quality. Overall 3.75/5

A blood red provocation

I could start by identifying MAAI as a floral chypre diva. I could note the contrast between its soapy aldehydes with smears of dark animalic musks. I could describe its soaring, brassy florals in more depth, so on and so forth. But others here have already done it so well.

As such, I will instead describe how MAAI makes me feel - like a member of the aristocracy sporting a choker of glittering, fat, blood red rubies during the French Revolution. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche indeed.

IF I had never smelled the original version of MAAI, I would appreciate this scent all the more. Unfortunately, I bought a bottle when it first came out, and its strikingly green and resiny animalic qualities floored me. Now however, this wild cat of the jungle has returned from the vet minus its testicles and claws and wearing a plastic cone of shame.

MAAI is still an interesting and lovely 'fume, highlighting some musky florals (primarily tuberose), undergirded with spicy, soapy woods. It's even a bit aftershave-y in an old school way, but it ain't a patch on what it used to be. So know that when you read reviews referencing and reveling in its strikingly animalic nature, you're hearing about a beast from the past, now sadly neutered and safe for the furniture.

Modern Chypre Extrordinaire

Its really good. Initially kind of camphorous. Civet aldehydes jasmine. Its awesome. 5 stars, top 10 for me.

To me this was a MACHO male scent, and I rarely characterize any scent as gender-specific. I came of perfume age in the blasts of the overblown 1980's.To me this smelled like the skanky too-old guys still at the bar at last call. The initial charred animalistic smokiness almost did me in. It did mellow but the unpleasant almost metallic civit ran the other fainter of heart ambers and florals away leaving a little puff of an old fire pit the morning after camping.

BOGUE – MAAI (2014)

A blast of luxuriant resins greets the nose upon initial application. They are a bit sharp at first, but quickly warm. I sense cedar wood as well, though it is not listed in the note tree. (The note tree itself is rather secretive, announcing “resins,” “spices,” “incense infusions,” and “animalics,” without revealing any by name.)

Soon the florals begin to enter, slowly and quietly, with tuberose and ylang leading the procession. I can't detect the rose or jasmine listed. Cinnamon and cardamom (ala Laurent's Opium) appear alongside. The animalics arrive with civet, musk and castoreum prominent. It all settles down to a deep, warm, masculine aroma, reminding me of a carpentry emporium: the aroma of freshly sawed wood, combining with shellac, lemon oil and honeyed turpentine.
I am unable to detect any sandalwood or oak moss, although other Basenoters do.

As with MEM, Bogue's blending and use of obviously quality oils is stellar. This is one I would be hard pressed to label as unisex, as it is to my nose overwhelmingly masculine, just as MEM is unabashedly feminine by nature.

Recommended for those into the “woods” genre.

In the home office I share with the better half there is a framed picture of the October '68 cover of Couture magazine hanging prominently… a beautiful woman modeling a monarch butterfly dress that is simply stunning.

I've gotten lost in that picture more than once and each time I wonder what I'd do with that particular form of perfection if I had it in my hands. Where would we go? What would we do? Who'd be around?

Thoughts quickly flitter to the same end, I snap to, and get on back to the life I live. There's no dispiriting sigh. It simply is what it is.

MAAI – a stunning floral bouquet wrapped in animalic resins.

Classic sights and classic smells do intersect from time to time! Outstanding as it is though this one is similarly not for me. It's for my favorite robe from time to time and it's for THAT Lady in THAT dress, pollinating my imagination from time to time.

Give me one ping… one ping only!

p.s. ... from a decant of the initial iteration, I believe.

Home Run.

It's a cheap set of words, but it should retain its power in the case of Bogue's mythical "Maai," for experiencing this fragrance is exactly the occasion such words are reserved for.

When one thinks of the universal terms "vintage chypre" or "classical animalics," one has in mind abstract principles which contemporary fragrances are critiqued by (and which may very well never have existed as particulars); however, in the case of Bogue Maai, they find themselves actualized within a concrete referent from which these critical thoughts congeal into a manifest potion whose magical charm will enchant any even semi-critical mind towards fragrance outside of cheap celebrity fragrances and designer campaigns.

As you would guess with the iconographic categories above, this fragrance has it's fair share of bright, flawless and lush aldehydes, old-school, damp, green and slightly earthy oakmoss, musky and slightly urinous civet, and even further still musks from the castoreum and hyraceum which add a leathery and somewhat earthy aspect to the already lush set of musks roaming about this vast forest of ancient glory.

The florals used here are lovely in that, they make themselves known as a distinct floral quality without ever translating the overall effect towards that of a floral (be it rose, jasmine, or tuberose) centric fragrance. Instead occasionally pulling out affects from individual floral notes such as the indoles or green tinges, both of which find themselves accentuating different flowers, and yet flowing like the wind through them - gently dancing from one to the next thus creating the totalizing qualities which obviously come from the floral notes found herein, without fully focusing on any which one of them in particular, or in full.

Below all of this there are a few series of accords, some sweeter (perhaps just another phantom facet from the bouquet of florals) and others balsamic and resinous (a warmth which comes to the side of the already heated animallic floor to tone down some of it's otherwise sharper qualities,) recall the full breadth of the forest's reach, and some of the mysterious and foreign creatures residing there. They never fully play themselves out to me as anything the kingdoms of others at play under the divine council of Maai itself, but they are certainly there constantly reminding the wearer of just how wonderfully immense Bogue Maai is.

This is without a doubt the rubric by which all fragrances attempting to build a bridge to that universal and glorious past of classic animallics and vintage chypres should be judged.

10/10.

YT: Jess AndWesH

Woody. Resinous. Wet straw. Opens with the scent like that of an antique cedar, hope chest. Screechy, banshee-voiced rose and jasmine. Dirty, soil, and earth. Skanky animal cage. Morphs into a smell that reminds me of an artists', indoor co-op. Folks refinishing old furniture on one side of the building - people painting portraits and such with oils, on the other. In other words varnish, shellac, turpentine, and lindseed oil aromas. I love it! I don't love the cost. A bit salty for my pocketbook.

All the heavy breathing about MAAI on internet forums led me to expect something quite different – everything from animal magnetism to animal disgrace (away to the naughty corner with you for peeing on the floor). So it was quite a surprise to be greeted by MAAI's old school ‘suave gent' style opening – resins and florals with abstract aldehydic radiance, rounded by a sweet and warm musk, that somehow signalled slicked back hair and a shirt open to the second button. The musk – and for me this perfume majors on musk, particularly in the drydown – does have that lovely animal warmth, but this animal ain't rubbing its backside on your carpet. Instead there's an aura of almost soapy freshness which combines intriguingly with a wine must scent.
MAAI is a perfume of layers – there are honeyed florals that surprise the wearer in bursts and then get contained again by their cordon of a dry leather-like moss accent, there's the bustle of polished smooth woody tones saturated with that head-spinning muskiness, and then the angularity of terpenes and resins. The whole thing speaks at once with one voice and with many – and it seems to have so much to say. Rich, ravishing and beautifully detailed, MAAI is a perfume for indulgent days when one can take the time to get just a little lost in how good one smells.

I must second the eloquent praise of the esteemed WhySoSerious, which reflects my own sentiments about Maai. It is a fragrance that brings a smile to my face every time, because it is so alive and vibrant, like the olfactory silhouette of an actual human being- a very sexy human being at that. Wearing it is like merging a second skin with your own. The green tuberose note is both elegant and - thanks to the aldehydes -sparkly, the animalics are present, though not in-your-face but rather exuding a gentle but insistent erotic tug - like the hypnotizing skin scent of your beloved. Warm resinous woods and mossiness perfect the experience, which is framed by an Art Deco sense of restraint - nothing here is garish and over the top and in fact Maai is far more wearable than most vintage animalic chypres, which may have olfactory bits and pieces protruding from them shamelessly, that are no longer considered as desireable as they used to be. Maai, then, is not tired retro, but neo-classicism at its best and it truly shines among the many half-baked, sterile, synthetic, lifeless, thin or screechy perfume wraiths that constitute "niche" today, a living, breathing, blooming, glowing beauty.

Big Thumbs Up. It might overtake Chypre Palatin as my favourite modern rendition of a classic dirty chypre that (as many mention elsewhere) is not particularly a new invention but refreshingly close to vintage perfumes that we all feared would never be recreated to their full fanfare potential. This is a refreshingly GOOD ifra-dodger.

If you like Kouros, you must try this as it presents a more elegant, long-lasting, and complex elixir in the dirty floral chypre category. However, if you're not into urine-ous leanings, skip it - you're probably too much of a wimp for Maai. Granted, I don't find it nearly as dirty as some reviews suggest. It is sparkling and bright, in fact, with its radiantly masterful opening of crisp, dry aldehydes and incense. The dirtier elements come later, sit close to the skin and, even then, tend to simmer non-obtrusively with the florals and resins.

Overpriced, I would say. But such is the disadvantage of getting your hands on those hard-to-find, small-production niche fragrances that run the risk (as Bogue´s cologne) of one day becoming extinct. I do not regret the purchase and one spray goes a looooooooooong way!

Edit: Does anyone who owns the discontinued Creed Old English Leather find that Maai dries down to THAT exact scent? (On paper, at least!)

Maai smells expensive and like something produced before allergen regulations. How the oakmoss and civet smell (are?) so real and are used in such quantities, I do not know. The problem to me is that it smells like an imitation of old fragrances rather than a new one. Perhaps I am too susceptible to marketing, image, and stories attached to perfume but wearing this is not nearly as pleasing as wearing actual La Nuit, Montana, Kouros or what have you. It feels incomplete. It has no history. ELDO Rien is a similar old-style opulent chypre but it is its own entity, and its cast of rubber and tar over aldehydic floral make it feel modern rather than a dogmatic imitation of the past. My first thought on smelling Maai was not that it was incredible, but that it smelled uncannily like Marilyn Miglin Pheromone or Charlie. Actually, my first thought was "Aviance Night Musk!" I have never smelled Aviance Night Musk, but Maai smelled like my mental image of Aviance Night Musk, if that makes any sense, something from 1980 that would've been advertised with an image of Dressed to Kill pantyhose legs in heels. It almost has a feminine bowling alley dowdiness to it. It feels bizarre to pay $300 for Marilyn Miglin Pheromone. In ten years if they still make this and all the real chypres are gone, we'll see how I feel. On another note, the perfumer himself, Antonio Gardoni, is very nice to look at. Perhaps if I smelled Maai emanating from his chest hair it would not make me think of Sally Struthers in Five Easy Pieces so much.

I'm neutral on it. This sort of scent is just not my style: rich, opulent, floral. I'm not a fan of tuberose, finding the indolic notes a bit jarring. However, I will concede that this is a well-made, complex scent. I can see why it some would find it beautiful.
It starts with lovely resinous notes in shades of green and brown. I like this phase. The spices pick up very quickly and add a lot of sweet, exotic heft.
Unfortunately for me, the scent just keeps ramping up, up, up. To my taste it gets sweet and dense, heavy and unpleasant. The animalic notes are intriguing and earthy, but they too add to the heaviness.
I had hoped the resinous notes were ameliorate the mix, but they get buried.

Over the past 20 years or so, perfume lovers have started to become rather jaded as the so-called “homogenization of taste” has taken place, accelerated and shaped by the largest perfume houses, which generally no longer make perfume for art's sake, but for the sake of what will sell. Rather than create a beautiful work of perfume and then sell it to the people who will love it, they do extensive market research and create their fragrances based on what they think the people want.

The problem with this approach is that most people are not especially creative when imagining a personal fragrance, which has left us with this overwhelming glut of “clean/fresh” or “sweet” or “floral” concoctions that currently saturate modern mainstream perfume. The landscape consists of endless variations on the same thing (now it's “oud”), recycled over and over until anyone who's tried more than three or four is nauseated and bored with the whole thing.

But, occasionally, flashes of brilliance ignite and light up the desolate perfume wasteland. Bogue Profumo's epic animal masterpiece Maai is less a flash and more a supernova.

Described by its creator as an attempt to marry smoke and sandalwood dust with what he (and many great perfumers) considers a unique and challenging note: tuberose.

Honestly, Maai is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful things I have ever smelled.

It opens with a burst of smoke and wood. This is not the kind of smoke you'd get from a campfire or a leather shop, but the rich, earthy, primeval smoke you'd smell walking through a forest after the whole thing had burned. This is the smoke of new creation, of the fury of Mother Nature, underlain with the scent of wood and soil. It's brilliantly married with animal, almost urinous civet in the fashion of the great chypre masterpieces of old (I'm especially reminded of Guerlain's Vol de Nuit) and rich oakmoss, which is just about the earthiest thing you can include in a perfume.

The use of real oakmoss was banned by the IFRA (International Fragrance Association, the body that regulates the perfume industry) a couple of years ago due to what many believe is obscene over-caution. Oakmoss naturally contains a compound called atranol, which can cause occasional mild skin irritations in a very small number of people. However, it is still possible to use the genuine article in perfumery if it undergoes an expensive and time-consuming process to remove the atranol content, and that's what Sig. Gardoni has done here. The oakmoss in Maai is the real thing and gives the perfume a rich, solid, well-rounded feel.

The tuberose is of the sharp, green, VERY fresh variety, as if the juice contains the very essence of what a healthy tuberose should smell like, distilled into its mysterious liquid depths. This is partly due to the tasteful inclusion of aldehydes, which are lain over the entire fragrance in such a way as to give it a luminous, silvery-green quality, like sunlight breaking through the forest canopy. As the perfume dries down further, it retains its rich, mossy-civet feel, but becomes more resinous and smooth. The dirty, musky, intensely sexy character remains undiluted throughout the entire development of the perfume, but this is not to say that it's linear; it's simply so well composed that the spirit behind its creation shines through at all times, though the pieces from which that spirit is assembled shift in arrangement to show off different facets at different times.

About the best way I can describe my overall impression of Maai is through a clever quote I heard in one of my literature courses some years ago: “Sleeping in clean sheets isn't nearly as much fun as waking up in dirty ones.” It's deeply, animalistically sensual, utterly uncompromising, and breathtakingly gorgeous. Perhaps owing to the first review I read of it, which described it as “The Chypre of the Treetop Valkyries,” I tend to associate it with big cats, especially panthers. There's just something intensely graceful yet unabashedly powerful about it.

This is the perfume Mother Nature wears when she wants to remind humanity why they once feared the forests.

This perfume answers to the question: "Can never be original a Bogue perfume?".
Never. Sorry, NEEVER.

This is an extraordinarily evocative fragrance, one of those that transports you places. In this way, it's like Djedi and vintage L'Heure Bleu, two of the most evocative fragrances created, with reputations for their capacity to transport people. Everyone has a story of where L'Heure and Djedi took them. Maai has that same effect on me. In truth, this is one of the reason I love fragrances.
What is outstanding about this fragrance is its rich, complex, intoxicating, honeyed, leathery floral smell. There's a slight mustiness to the opening that usually indicates angelica, which instantly adds an atmospheric edge to the voluptuousness and sets a stage, which is a clever use of the opening. With this combination, I'm pretty much taken to a place that drips honey, where flowers fill the air with moaning and sighs, like music, a constantly glowing song in air thick and ancient, laden with old sunshine, dust and antiquity, so even the day is dark, though sweet and rich. This place isn't about sight at all, but smell and touch and sound... And the leather! It is everywhere and everything, skin and clothes - sweet, tender, tough and ultimately, the sweet dream of being human, which glows forth out of the darkness of this fragrance. What may be most special about Maai is its kindness to skin, its rich effect on people. It's a fragrance that loves people. The strong visceral input of Maai ultimately becomes intoxicating to me. A smashing fragrance.

The opening of MAAI reminds me a great deal of Liz Zorn's Meerschaum. It's top notes fairly knock me over the head- spices, incense and resins make me think of an old ship laden with goods from the Orient.
In about an hour, The middle notes of honeyed flowers and a ton of sandalwood begin to take over. I cannot stop smelling my wrist.
I used one spray last night before bed, and when I woke up, I could still clearly smell it. Oakmoss? Not sure. But that is some serious longevity for me.
This is one of the most interesting, high quality scents that I have ever had the pleasure to own. My little split may not last long......

MAAI is a rich, deep redolent floral chypre. The term "maai" is a Japanese word that refers to the space between two opponents in martial arts. Is this the interplay of opposites in this scent? On this side are fluid flowing florals of tuberose, rose, Ylang, jasmine . . . and on the other side of the circle are dry decayed, earthy civet, castoreum, hyraceum. MAAI is the space between these opposing forces. Yes, it has noticeable animalic aromas that are balanced nicely and slowly blend with and subdue the deep florals - this conflict drives the character of the fragrance. There is also a rich grounded aspect to this scent that keeps me forgetting this is a floral fragrance. The combination of parts create an all new story here. Warm and uplifting. I like it.