Aqua Motu / Motu
Comptoir Sud Pacifique (1992)

Clever salt air seaweed? fragrance. Different and good. Have to get more. Comes in a metal spray bottle.

The opening is beachy, suntan lotion with white florals. It remains linear and doesn't change much on my skin. Natural and very pleasant. Definitely try if you like beach scents. Probably leans feminine but again, give it a try if you like a nice beach scent.

Performance was just fine for me, nothing amazing. Decent projection for a 4-5 hours and then a skin scent for 7-8 hours.

Genre: Aquatic

Aqua Motu starts out smelling like "just another cucumber aquatic" on my skin. Given some time it evolves into a minty-fresh wood and citrus scent, with a healthy dash of seaweed and iodine thrown in. It reminds me very much of Beth Terry's Mare, only a little bit less lush and sweet. In fact, the two are close enough that I couldn't justify owning both.

Pleasant, but not worth the rash it gives me when I wear it.

Smells like wet sand and musty cigarette smoke.

If your idea of a 'beach scent' is the invocation of a miserable cold day spent by the sea followed by a night in a grubby nicotine stained B&B, then this is the scent for you.


I had to wash it off after an hour.

It is probably best not to examine the constituent parts of Aqua Motu too closely. The bottom line is that it works as a simple segue into a fresh, light and refreshing environment. The aquatic genre is not generally known as a seam of great creativity, but Aqua Motu is certainly a couple of clicks away from expected generic soup. This is Sud Pacifique getting it right, and I think is an example of what they try to achieve across the board. Motu is simply great fun, and I look forward to using it in the next heatave

An extremely synthetic and -- to me -- unrealistic beach scent, this fragrance uses an iodiney salt water accord similar to those I've smelled in many other marine fragrances which aim for realistic beach smells. For some reason, however, this one is far less effective on me than others in the same family have been. At first I can indeed smell what I suspect was the intended olfactory gestalt ("Oh, hey! It's briney salt water!"), but after a second or two, that marine accord then falls apart on me completely, fragmenting into a constellation of unrelated and not always pleasant scents: celery, hot vinyl car seats, modeling clay, the smoke from melting plastic.

The overall effect is rather sickening, and while I'm not usually bothered by synthetic aquatic accords -- the much-maligned Calone, for example, causes me no trouble at all -- this particular one leaves me feeling nauseated and headachey.

Fragrances that I've found far more successful at pulling off a realistic marine salt water effect include CB I Hate Perfume's Mr. Hulot's Holilday, and Profumum's Aqua di Sale. Of course, both of those fragrances do cost a whole lot more. I guess when it comes to convincing marine accords, sometimes you get what you pay for.