Beauty Care: Tauer L'Air du Desert Marocain Perfume Review

Tauer L’Air du Desert Marocain Eau de Toilette Intense is meant to evoke the dry, cool air of a desert blended with Moroccan spices. This fragrance is characterized by dry, cedar woods with aromatic spices that progressively warms up from slightly smoky, resinous amber as the base subsumes the top and heart notes. Tauer lists L’Air du Desert Marocain’s notes as such:

top notes: coriander, cumin blended with petitgrain
heart notes: rock rose, “hint of” jasmine
base notes: dry cedar woods, vetiver, ambergris (in the “background”)

That being said, LuckyScent lists lemon, bergamot, jasmine, cistus, bourbon, geranium, vanille, and patchouli as additional notes for L’Air du Desert Marocain.

A dear friend recommended I try this as it was one of the drier, woodier scents she had encountered, and for me, my prior baseline for dryness was Tom Ford’s Bois Morocain (which I love). Tauer’s L’Air du Desert Marocain is a cult favorite for more niche perfume fans, too, so it was only right that it made my list of fragrances to sample.

The opening was full of aromatic spices–the coriander and cumin really came through, but the cumin was aromatic (and not sweaty) on me, flanked by sharp lemon and bitter orange peel. A couple of minutes later, a blast of dry, woody air with freshly ground dried spice; it was dry, dusty, woody, and almost savory in its spices. From customer reviews, the opening isn’t for everyone as it has an intensity and distinctive quality that isn’t quite like other fragrances on the market, but on me, the strongest part of the opening lasted about a half hour before softening and sweetening up (slightly) before the heart notes started to bloom.

The bitter and sharper citrus receded within the first ten minutes and left only a faint lemon tendril below the surface, so the majority of the opening phase was made of dry woods with aromatic spices, slightly more dominated by cumin over the other spices. After an hour, a resinous amber started to emerge in L’Air du Desert Marocain to mix with the dry, cedar woods with a hint of cumin.

Two hours in, and the fragrance was slightly smokier with spiced, dry cedar with amber and patchouli that lingered a little closer to my skin compared to the opening.
It remained a drier, spicier, and woodier scent that felt rugged, even as it softened and smoothed out over time. The dry down was dry, smoky woods and resinous amber with the spices turning a little sweeter the longer the perfume wore for on me.

For testing, I purchased a 0.7ml dab vial of the scent, and I used approximately half of the vial for each wear test, which was applied to the underside and topside of my wrist area on my left arm. I use an unscented moisturizer prior to applying the scent as this is also my swatching arm (aka, incredibly parched at any given moment) as I found scent did not hold well here otherwise. It was extremely long-lasting (over 14 hours and still hovered slightly over my skin) with heavier sillage and projection (at least for the first four hours), so it may need to be used less liberally depending on where one is going.

Subjectively, I liked it but didn’t love it, but it’s a scent I’d consider getting in a smaller size or re-testing in a few weeks to revisit. I felt like I didn’t really start to enjoy the scent until several hours in, and the opening was too sharp for me (though, as a wearer, I am most concerned how it transforms after the opening, since those openings rarely last for long!).