Aftelier Perfumes

Clarimonde Revisited

– At the crossroads of narrative, perfume and prose 

One of the greatest joys and highest privileges in my time as a perfume blogger has been the opportunity to participate in what I can only describe as …magic.

Instead of wrestling with concepts and angles, wondering how to write about any given perfume, the concept is already a given. Instead of wrangling ghosts in solitude, I could write away to my heart’s content, happy knowing that other bloggers wrote as I did, that perfumers felt as I do. As we did, as even I did, we each in our own ways created something that became larger, lusher and far more lustrous than any of us or our readers could have anticipated.

This was – and still is – known as The Clarimonde Project, named for the 1836 Théophile Gautier story La Morte Amoureuse, or as it was known when it was translated in 1907, simply – Clarimonde. The haunting, evocative story of the young priest Romuald who was destined for the seminary and had never known any other love than God’s, and how it all fell away in an instant the moment he looked up at his ordination and saw the celebrated courtesan Clarimonde and in an instant, all he knew and loved and believed fell away…or did it? Did he dream of his other, alternate life as Clarimonde’s beloved, or was it only too real and his old life as a priest of God the dream? Was Clarimonde simply a woman of incandescent beauty, or was she as Romuald’s abbot claimed, the vilest form of monster, renounced as vile as the sins Romuald surely  – or maybe – committed with her? Just as Romuald’s fevered prose, the story shapeshifts and changes each time you read it or listen to Joy Chan’s spellbinding reading of the story.

The Clarimonde Project is the brainchild of my dear friend and fellow blogger Lucy of Indieperfumes, and has since grown to involve not just some truly haunting perfumes, but also a Pinterest page and the inspiration for a masquerade ball and a three-day event at MiN New York to start on October 25th. Tickets to the event can be found here.

But it began…with the story, which can be read online here, or enjoyed as an audio file read by Joy Chan at this link, which is highly recommended.

It continued with bespoke perfumes, lipstains, and a dream pillow created by Monica Miller of Perfume Pharmer, Mandy Aftel of Aftelier, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Ayala Moriel Sender and the House of Cherry Bomb by Maria McElroy of Aroma M and Alexis Karl by Scents By Alexis.

So it evolved…into some of the best perfume writing to be found anywhere by some of the very best perfume writers in the blogosphere.

For the story of Romuald and Clarimonde – courtesan, woman, Woman or supernatural aberration – grew into other stories and other words, all of them a surrender…to the beauty of Gautier’s story and to the beauty of the perfumes that story inspired.

Of all my many, many words in my two years writing about perfume, I can say for myself that I have never written as I did for Clarimonde before or since. To this day, they all remain my very best perfume writing, just as the privilege to participate in something so special, so haunting and so magical is an honor I will cherish –  always. 

The Clarimonde Project on the Alembicated Genie:

Sangre – perfume and lipstains by Monica Miller: Blood and Kisses

Aftelier Perfumes‘ Oud Luban: The Sanctity of Solace

House of Cherry Bomb’s Immortal Mine: A Philter Perilous

Ayala Moriel Sender’s ‘Clarimonde’: Dreaming Venetian

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz‘ ‘Paradise Lost’: Reclaiming Eternity

The Perfume Pharmer’s reviews of
Oud Luban
Immortal Mine
Ayala Moriel’s Clarimonde
Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’ Paradise Lost

Jade Dressler

Deana Sidney’s (LostPastRemembered) post on Clarimonde, vampire lore and the perils of perfumed port

Scent Hive
Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Indieperfumes’ reviews of
Sangre
Oud Luban
Immortal Mine
Ayala Moriel’s Clarimonde
Dawn Spencer Hurwitz’ Paradise Lost

Beth of PerfumeSmellin Things: The Clarimonde Project:

The Clarimonde Project on WordPress

Clarimonde on Pinterest

Image: ‘Barbaric Red’ – via the Clarimonde Pinterest page, pinned from Hoop Skirts & Corsets

Afloat in a Chocolate Sea

–       a review of Aftelier Perfumes’ ‘Cacao’

Close your eyes and think of all the wonders Europe never knew until Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztecs.

Tomatoes, chiles, peppers. These are all fine, all good, but more marvels waited to slay the unsuspecting in the verdant jungles of the Yucatàn, and of them all, two in particular would have a lasting impact on the European culinary landscape. These nearly five hundred years later, both are so ubiquitous by now they’ve become bywords for opposite ends of a spectrum…one unassuming if pretty pale green orchid, whose fermented seed pods fired all our imaginations and that is vanilla, and the seeds of a small jungle tree that ignited passions, restored the mind, gave strength and stamina and was used as both currency and luxury tax. Say the word, and I can guarantee a whole onslaught of images in your mind…silky, smooth, sweet, sinful, and nearly impossible to resist…

Chocolate.

Where would we be without this delicious marvel of the mouth? One story of the conquest of the Aztec declares that Moctezuma drank fifty cups of xocoatl – a bitter, frothy drink of cacao, chiles and vanilla – a day, but then again, he also had 300 concubines. Surely, they drank xocoatl, too?

Here’s what I know – botanist Carl von Linné was surely giving himself away when he invented the name for the cacao tree. He called it Theobroma. The food of the Gods. Von Linné was (also) a lifelong, dedicated chocoholic.

Some of us are addicted to chocolate in its many forms – or simply chocolate in any form.

But to wear in perfume? Once upon a time, I would have said…not so much.

Nothing against dessert, it’s just I’d rather eat it than wear it, and when I’ve worn it, I’ve found myself wanting to eat it.

So it was until friend and fellow perfume blogger Carrie of Eyeliner On A Cat sent me a decant of Guerlain’s magnificent Spiritueuse Double Vanille. Arguably one of the greatest vanilla perfumes ever created.

When next she murmured…iris and white chocolate, I had to own that one, too. Since then I’ve adored chocolate notes in perfumes, so long as they’re a) not combined with patchouli overdoses (Angel, here’s looking at you) or b) and done with all respect to the divine cocoa bean.

Carrie’s nudge sent this perfumoholic over the edge!

Chocolate is never just…chocolate. It can be amazingly complex, floral, fruity, and densely aromatic – if not outright narcotic in a way that no other food item quite is, yet if anyone at all could turn that complexity of aroma into perfume, it would be Mandy Aftel, who has a spectacular talent for defining ‘aroma’ in new, daringly delicious ways.

Cacao is nothing if not…delicious. For the alcohol base for this perfume, she macerated cocoa beans specially selected by master chocolate maker Steve DeVries with a floral Tahitian vanilla for a full year.

Just the alcohol base for this perfume, and already this chocoholic is drooling on her keyboard.

Cacao is a marvel of a perfume, not only for the dedication to craftsmanship and the concept of chocolate that waiting a full year for an alcohol base implies, but also for the way it opens with a bright, trumpeting, clarion call of citrus – blood orange and pink grapefruit, say the notes – which isn’t what I expected from something called ‘Cacao’.

I expected a full, dark, silky chocolate kiss, and what I got was a wake-up call. Hello!

Citrus and chocolate are old, familiar friends, but Cacao has yet more surprises in store, because some time later, the real surprise – and the real genius of Cacao – kicks in for reasons I shall presently explain.

I don’t know precisely what kind of cocoa beans were used for that alcohol base. The three varieties of cocoa bean, Criollo, Forastero and Trinitario, which is a hybrid of the first two, have very different flavor profiles. Most of the chocolate consumed today is Forastero cocoa, but truly dedicated chocoholics have a preference for Criollo chocolate for its ethereal, flowery nuances, and these are precisely what Mandy chose to highlight with the inspired addition of jasmine sambac and grandiflorum, elevating an already lush and sensual  blend into the plush and downright decadent stratosphere of chocoholic gourmand heaven, and if that’s not genius, I don’t know what is. For all I know about jasmine (which is quite a bit by now), this combination of jasmine + chocolate was invented in some alternate universe where Willy Wonka’s Oompa Loompas sang into the blend in flawless harmony…‘What an inspired idea that is!’

As those glorious blooms fade into the twilight, the coup de foudre comes forward to take my breath away… the opulent, flowery wonder of Tahitian vanilla, those fatal, fragrant cocoa beans and somewhere along the way, my definition of ‘chocolate’ and my concept of ‘gourmand’ has once again been rattled to bedrock in all the best ways, and by Golly, I would so wear this to unnerve a fellow chocoholic, and by Golly, the guy wouldn’t stand an almond’s chance in a chocolate bath!

Cacao brought out the voodoo of Carrie’s inner child, and it brought out that gluttonous chocolate-loving side I usually try to forget. “All you need is love,” said Charles M. Schulz, before he went on “But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”

Thanks to Mandy Aftel’s ‘Cacao’, it hurts even less, when this former gourmand-averse perfume writer wants nothing more than to swim this perfectly executed marvel and float in a fruity, flowery Xocoatl sea, where all the most delicious, decadent dreams always come true!

Aftelier’s ‘Cacao’ is available in parfum and eau de parfum from the Aftelier website. Steve DeVries chocolate wonders can be explored here.

Disclaimer: A sample of Cacao eau de parfum was provided for review by Mandy Aftel.

The Ghosts that Time Breathed In

–  a review of Aftelier Perfumes’ Sepia

In this overlooked corner of the old world, with it history dating back at least to Neolithic times, where the past can be seen in both buildings and landscapes, river valleys, stone dolmens and peat bogs, there’s no shortage of ghosts. Dolmens crowning hills or appearing in a beechwood glade, medieval castles fallen to ruins by a lake, the eerie, numinous presences haunting a peat bog on a midsummer midnight while the elderflowers exude their magical siren song of summer…there are plenty of ghosts if you know where to look.

But ghost towns, the abandoned ruins of towns left entirely behind, are something Europeans tend to tear down, plow over and rebuild, unless they’re kept for memorial purposes our ravaged history only wishes we could forget.

Yet in the US, and particularly in the Southwest, ghost towns abound, echoing what was once a gloried past in a brief and fleeting instant, when they teemed with life and dreams and hopes that maybe this time, maybe even you could get lucky, maybe even you could strike it rich and realize a dream before the veins ran out and the river ran dry.

I’ve seen a few ghost towns in my time in the US, deserted under a blazing sun and a searing blue sky, the tumbleweeds bouncing down the empty street in the wind that sweeps the past away but leaves the shell of it behind, where the coyotes sing their songs at night of dreams dead and abandoned to fade like the buildings that contained them, oh, so many years ago.

The ghost towns of the California Gold Rush of 1848 were also the inspiration for Mandy Aftel’s latest collaboration with Laurie Erickson of Sonoma Scent Studios on Nathan Branch’s blog, and here we have the result, Aftelier’s Sepia, her ode to the ravages of time and the beauty of decay found in those empty shells of life, dreams and hopes.

One of my favorite things about Mandy’ work is how it continues to surprise me, continues to evolve, and continues to reject all the obvious choices to expand upon and challenge our perceptions of both beauty and of perfume, for her perfumes are nothing if not surprising, unique and more often than not, uniquely resistant to analysis, but they are also always uniquely and surprisingly beautiful. Sepia is no exception.

How many times have you encountered a perfume that begins both light and dark? That sounds like such a contradiction, like some conjuring trick that can’t be done. Yet I tell you, it can and it has, because Sepia starts with a sunshine burst of citrus, that fragrant clarion call to awaken your perceptions and at the same time, the blood cedarwood adds its own brand of some dark and diaphanous wash of ink, damping down the sunshine, deepening the story to come, almost, as Lucy of Indieperfumes also noted in her review, as if it evolves in reverse, bringing forth hints of the base that recede like shadows beneath sunlight, shifting and changing.

Time never does stand still and neither does Sepia, emanating its many tales in a multi-hued and many-layered middle of lotus and jasmine, strawberry and cocoa and coffee that manage to elegantly sidestep any associations you might have of gourmand, all of them combined instead giving me one olfactory childhood association in particular that to me is uniquely American and that I have never, ever encountered before in perfume, one that exudes a distant, faraway memory of time more than almost anything else I know – and that is…sassafras. Not the taste of it – root beer will be the very last thing on your mind with Sepia – but the scent and ‘feel’ of it, with its floral high notes and earthy, unusual base, the coffee and cocoa added in such delicate amounts they never detract from the opulent jasmine or the otherworldly lotus, the strawberry somehow bridging that impossible leap between flowers and coffee, smoothing the path that lies ahead for the richer, darker base to bloom, flowering tobacco and spiky, woody oud, earthy labdanum and cepes anchoring it all somehow back to Earth and back in time, all wrapped around a golden base of ambergris that expands and enriches this ode to time and decay and evokes the sepia tints of long-ago and near forgotten daguerrotypes of lovers and sinners, losers and winners, memories of time, of space and of place. When thousands of dreamers with nothing to lose left everything they knew in search of a golden dream that was there for the taking and the daring, just waiting for discovery in the mountain streams of a state that even today seems more dream than reality.

I can breathe in Sepia and see it happening as I breathe, breathe it as I dream. I’m standing on that deserted street in that ghost of a town, seeing the sun-seared, time-blasted wood of the derelict houses that once sheltered those long-ago dreams of fortune and fame, hearing the wind whistle its way through them as the tumbleweeds dance and bounce. As I do, as I inhale and even I dream, I can sense how the color slowly seeps back into the landscape like a developing old-fashioned color photograph before my eyes, growing richer and deeper. Before long, echoes of sound are added, the shouts of lost voices, the whinny of horses and the rumble of carts through the dusty streets, of prospectors and miners returning with everything or nothing, gold dust and nuggets burning holes in their imaginations and their pockets or else scorching their broken dreams to cinders and ashes, charlatans and women lurking in the shady confines of the saloons and parlors, waiting to realize their own hopes and dreams in that flood of possibilities and gold in the hills. I can breathe Sepia and remember…all the ghosts that Time breathed in and soon forgot.

Yet no life is ever forgotten. All the ghosts of that forgotten town lay in waiting to be found and bottled by a perfumer who told their many tales and sent them on to a dreamer half the world away, who breathed it in and breathed them back to life and all of it entire contained in a perfume… called Sepia.

Notes:

Top: Blood cedarwood, yellow mandarin, pink grapefruit

Heart: Pink lotus, strawberry, jasmine grandiflorum, cocoa, coffee

Base: Flowering tobacco, oud, indole, ambergris, cepes, labdanum 

Sepia is available as both eau de parfum and pure perfume from the Aftelier website, where samples are also available.

Disclosure: A sample of Sepia was sent to me for review by Mandy Aftel.

Follow the process behind the evolution of Sepia and Laurie Erickson’s ‘Forest Walk’ on Nathan Branch’s blog series ‘Letters To A Fellow Perfumer’ here:

Part 1 – part 2 – part 3 – part 4 – part 5

Photo from Bodie, California.

The Surprise at the Top of the Shop

–   a review of Aftelier Perfumes’ ‘Parfum de Maroc’

One of my recent obsessions this past spring has been Moroccan cuisine. This explains why I stood in front of an enormous spice rack on a busy day at one of my favorite local shops in town, a Lebanese market that stocks everything from addictive fresh-baked mahmoul cookies, baklava and orange flower water to nigella seeds, cherimoya fruit and bunches of fresh peppermint for tea. I had just bought not one, but three coffee grinders, one of which I would dedicate as a spice mill, and this Saturday morning, I had a mission: to make my own Ras al Hanout, the spice mixture that jazzes some of my favorite foods.

Which was precisely when I ran into a friend of mine, who works as a translator of Arabic and English. He cast a glance into my basket. Couscous, peppermint, Italian parsley, cilantro, those addictive mahmoul cookies, lemons, whole allspice, dried chiles, black and green cardamom pods, Ceylon cinnamon sticks, coriander seeds, almonds. “Ah!” he said. “You’re making your own Ras al Hanout! Don’t forget the rose petals!” He tossed a packet into my basket and gave me a conspiratorial grin. “That’s the secret, you know. Too many people forget. Do you know what it means?” “The top of the shop,” I answered. “Because that’s where the best spices are kept?” That made him laugh. “Only in Morocco. Everywhere else, it means a mortuary! You know, because they put you…on the top of the shop?” He winked. “But never mind…watch out for those mahmoul cookies. Roast your spices! And remember the rose petals! They make all the difference!” Whereupon he frogmarched me to the cash register and the very amused Lebanese he attacked with a torrent of Arabic and laughter concluding in a thirty percent discount on the contents of my basket.

The very top of the shop is also where you’ll find Aftelier’s equally delicious Parfum de Maroc, inspired by a journey to Morocco and that eponymous, addictive spice blend. No worries…this is most emphatically a perfume, and like all the very best perfumes, the kind of fragrant transport-in-a-bottle that enlightens the mind, enlivens the soul and exhales its own brand of exotic sunshine on your skin.

My own limited experience with Morocco goes no further than Casablanca, and the sensory shock of the market in color, sound and perfume under a blazing August sun I never quite forgot, and just as another perfume took me there in a sniff and a heartbeat, so does this one, although this is nothing like it.

The heat, the whirl and swirl of another culture living at a different, hotter pitch and timbre, all the striking, scorching color and fiery, feisty spice are all there right at the outset of Parfum de Maroc. A heady punch of ginger and its distant cousin galangal zaps your senses awake, followed by an exuberant orange, a mellow pepper and glowing over all like the Moroccan sun, a vibrant saffron smoldering its own kind of fire around the edges, which proves that spice is indeed…very, very nice. But Parfum de Maroc is no gourmand, does not have any edible associations, and as I’ve come to expect with Mandy Aftel’s creations, just as that delectable, spicy top accord fades, a most wondrous thing occurs.

Normally, when rose is immersed in a perfume, I know what to expect. It can be green, spiky, untamed, erotic, musky, lemony…even (here comes that word again!) spicy. Still – a rose is a rose is a…you get the idea.

Until I said that happy hello to Parfum de Maroc, I had never met a rose that hid so well behind its spice and light, flirty teases of jasmine, of nutmeg, a puff or two of dusky, dark cinnamon, and before I know it, the biggest surprise of all. It’s raining…dried rose petals! Nothing like fresh roses, these petals are earthy, warm, slightly dusty, underlining their inspiration and exuding their own kind of heat, glimpsed out of the corner of your olfactory eye in that faraway medina as if falling behind an ornate pierced woody screen of spice and cinnamon, a breath of jasmine caught from far away weaving its own ribbon of heaven into the mix. As those petals fade after a long while, the twilight descends. The blinding light and searing spice, the flowers that catch you by surprise, and the final curtain between night and day, cardamom and myrrh and rich, dark labdanum.

Where do all these fragrant colors begin, what could be said to describe Parfum de Maroc? It’s a tapestry woven to a memory of heat, color, light and perfume, it’s a vacation in a bottle, and it’s an exhilarating, happy aura to wrap around yourself on mundane, rainy days, when life conspires against you and you need that reminder – just like the spice blend, just like this perfume, you, too, belong only…at the top of the shop!

Notes: Bitter orange, fresh ginger, galangal, saffron, black pepper, nutmeg, jasmine, rose, cinnamon, cardamom, myrrh, labdanum.

Parfum de Maroc is available as a 1/4 oz. perfume and as an Eau de Parfum from the Aftelier website.

Disclosure: A sample was provided for review by Mandy Aftel.

Image: Peter Hammer, Redbubble. Used by permission.

Primeval Forces of Perfume

In Quantum Demonology, there is a term for what the protagonist calls…primeval forces, a phrase that refers to those musical epiphanies that are above superstardom and even above musical gods on an altogether different plane of existence. The ones she can’t live without, ever. The ones who never leave her iPod playlists. Ever.

But I have them in perfume terms, too. And a recent Skype conversation with one of them brought the concept up again. Which made me think, something this particular august personage does quite well. So what creates such paragons of fragrant epiphanies – what does it take to elevate illustrious perfumers and creative directors into my nosebleed stratosphere? Who are they? And why do they loom so important – on my person, in my cabinet, in my perfume subconscious? Read on, and I’ll tell you.

Understand that once upon a time, although I used – and likely abused – a wide range of perfumes starting at age 14, I did not always have such a visceral, emotional connection with perfumes. I operated on the time-honored French principle of “Ça sent beau”… “It smells…good!”, and so long as it worked on my mood, my manner or my nefarious plans, often horizontal, then all was well, until…

Until I began reading about perfume on a scale I never had before. In those days, it was olfaction by proxy, since I couldn’t afford any, but at least I could educate myself, and so I did, right up to the moment I read about a certain Paris-based perfume house, whose perfumes were described as ‘bottled emotions’. For whatever reasons, that idea stuck in my receptive mind. How did you…bottle emotion? And which ones? What did they smell like? Would they be different than the ones I already knew and loved, if no longer owned?

If I only knew what I know now.

Since becoming a perfume blogger in earnest, I’ve discovered that emotions could indeed be bottled – good, bad, even horror! (Secretions Magnifiques, here’s looking at you!). My tastes have evolved to such an extent that I love all sorts of perfumes – greens, chypres, opulent Orientals, knock ‘em dead florals, woods, gourmands, ouds…you name them, I’ll love them. There’s still room for improvement – musk is a note I struggle with – but I’m all for…fragrant transport to …elsewhere and otherwise, to new horizons and time travel, too!

Primeval Forces, however, elevate themselves above the rest. These creations are the ones I will wear without fail and with total surrender, the ones that suck me into a vortex of wonder, the ones I never hope to be without again, the ones that define not just this perfume writer, but this woman – and this soul. Which takes a lot more than simply…smelling good!

1) In every peerless work of art, so say the discerning, there is a hint of..strange, some oddity that catches the eye, the ear, or the nose. True beauty will always be unusual, always make you pause and take another look, another sniff, another snag that catches on the cogwheels of your imagination and sends it down a new and unexplored path. So that whiff of…strange that compels you to breathe deeper, that stops you cold and fires your imagination, would be my first criterion.

2) Every artistic creation – or collaboration, and some of my Primeval Forces are – contains some detectable droplet of the minds that conceived it. You could say that there’s an invisible ribbon in these bottles that goes straight from the creator(s) to that secret, bedrock location in my soul that was waiting for this reminder to shoot towards the light of awareness. I have to sense the heartbeat(s) behind it, which could explain why I tend to gravitate towards the niche and independent lines these days. They rarely disappoint me.

3) All my Primeval Forces excel at transport and the unexpected…they surprise me, they show me wonders, they make me cry, they take me places I’ve never known before, and as they do, my world is somehow larger, richer and far more colorful for it. Some kind of seismic perspective shift occurs, and how I define ‘perfume’ will never be the same.

4) Last, but not least…inspiration! When the time comes to sift through my impressions and turn them into expression, do I find myself tearing my hair out, grappling with metaphor and simile, trying to say something new, trying to expand – if not explode – my limitations as a writer? If that’s the case, I know I’m on to something spectacular. The less control I have over my own creative process, the better the end result. The perfumes that remove that illusory ‘control’ and just write my review for me – these are the ones I know I won’t be able to live without!

5) Each of these houses and perfumers march to their very own and distinctive beat. This means they can be as ground-breaking and as creative as they please, and so they are. Each has their own style and signature, and each of them make only their own rules.

So here they are – my fragrant Primeval Forces. There is no hierarchy here, no order of preference – these perfumers and houses are all laws unto themselves, continuing to take my breath away and explaining in liquid and essence, why I love to live and live to sniff!

Parfums Serge Lutens/Serge Lutens & Christopher Sheldrake

When I first read about Serge Lutens perfumes, I had this cold chill of intuition…there was something there, some secrets I needed to know. Not many understand quite so well the compelling beauty of strange and spectacular, of redefining by deconstructing. When I finally had the opportunity to try them, my world view changed…forever. I’ve been amazed ever since and I remain amazed every time I wear a Lutens, for familiarity does not take away that thrill of discovery and epiphany. I haven’t loved all of them, and in a few cases not at all, but of those I fell for – nearly twenty at last count! – I’ll love them for as long as I live.

Aftelier Perfumes/Mandy Aftel

Encountering the marvels of Mandy Aftel was one of the happiest ‘coincidences’ of my life. Mandy’s perfumes are nearly impossible to categorize, which qualifies her right there, but that’s only where she begins to pull those rabbits out of her hat. Strangely beautiful, beautifully strange, earthy, shockingly sensuous and opulent or ethereal as dancing moonbeams, she always surprises me and never compromises on her artistic vision. I have yet to encounter an Aftelier that hasn’t blown me away. They compel me and inspire me and fortify me in ways very few other perfumes do, so much that I usually have one drop of an Aftelier somewhere on me regardless of whatever else I wear, just because it’s the final cross on this T!

DSH Perfumes/Dawn Spencer Hurwitz

Right when I thought I was fast becoming my own living anachronism, mourning the death of Immortal Green Chypres, along came hope in a bottle in the form of a sample sent by Lucy of Indieperfumes. That sample was Vert pour Madame, and repercussions could be detected as far away as Buenos Aires at least. Dawn’s epic range and vision don’t stop there. Her knowledge of perfumes through history is unparalleled, her recreations and her own creations are…peerless, and just as Mandy, she knows just how to pull the rug from under my feet and expectations and swipe me sideways in all the best ways. I’ve yet to meet a DSH creation I couldn’t instantly fall for with a vengeance. As indeed I have! She’s simply…THAT…great!

Amouage Perfumes

Luxury in this day and age has become such an overused, over-hyped word. Ridiculously overpriced, average perfumes sold on pretentious PR copy are not how I define it. My perfume budget is so low, it’s a joke, yet I’m not laughing. I was laughing the day I caught myself ordering two fated (and outrageously expensive) samples of Amouage with the thought that I would be impervious to the hype, I would simply let these two speak for themselves, and despite many warnings from the Greek chorus of my fellow perfume bloggers (who knew precisely what I was in for), I was convinced Amouage couldn’t possibly be that stupendous. Famous last words, for heaven help me – they are. Every single one of them! Since the arrival of Creative Director Christopher Chong, Amouage has made perfumes so plush, unique and persuasive (if not addictive!), that all I can do is shrug at my own bloody-mindedness and surrender to their charms. In the case of Amouage, I’m so easy, it’s ridiculous. Or I am!

Opus Oils/Kedra Hart

Opus Oils, to my line of thinking, should be a smash success if there were any justice in this world. Because Kedra Hart makes perfume – always in danger of being just a little precious and high-minded – f-u-n. That might make you think they couldn’t be complex, tell stories, or take your breath away. Not so. Look past the tongue-in-cheek vintage-inspired copy (not that I’m complaining) and you will find perfumes as stellar as any others on my Primeval list, as rich and as surprising and evolving. As I work my way through my samples of Kedra’s creations, my FB wish list is getting ever longer. That they are all so easy to wear and to love can take away the fact that they are so masterfully constructed, with a sleight-of-hand that makes the very difficult look so very artless – always the sign of a true, dedicated, epically talented artist!

Neil Morris Fragrances/Neil Morris

Neil is a recent addition to my Primeval list, although I’ve been aware of him for quite some time. My introduction to Neil’s art was through a Vault collection perfume, and it literally wiped me off the floor in a swoon. But distracted as I am by all the details of my quotidian life, even I can feel that cold chill brush of intuition that sings… “Here we go – again!” For since that fatal discovery, thank all the perfume Gods!, Neil and his titanic talents have joined the Devilscent Project, and what a revelation they both have been! No neophyte to the Dark Arts of perfumery, he has reduced me to tears with his mods, because…by golly, he gets it! All of it – the light, the dark, the joy and the tragedy of my story. Our common fragrant journey has only just begun, but I am so grateful to have such a talent to explore,l and so privileged to have so many wonders to anticipate.

Olympic Orchids/Ellen Covey

If my (mis)education as a perfumoholic began with reading perfume blogs and evolved with the discovery of Serge Lutens, then it was surely cemented (or I was doomed!) when I discovered Olympic Orchids. Ellen Covey and her scents – orchid-inspired and otherwise – have done so very much to educate me and astonish me as well as delight me. She was my first indie perfumer, and has since been a perpetual surprise. Her orchid perfumes are spot-on, true to life and utterly spectacular (just ask the head gardener of the Orchid House at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Copenhagen, when I came to visit as the cattleyas bloomed, perfumes in tow), and the rest of her range is no less magnificent. But then – since this is the trouble we both like to make when we can! – we cooked up the Devilscent Project…and neither of us will ever quite be the same. The four Devils she conjured – and the synchronicity of their creation in her perfumes and my words – have shifted some major ground in my world, which has yet another reason for never quite… being the same!

Maria McElroy & Alexis Karl, Cherry Bomb Killer Perfume

Trouble always awaits when you’re sent eight samples of a new line and you can’t say one bad thing about any of them, only that you want…one of everything, pronto! This happened last summer when I was introduced to Aroma M and the lovely Maria McElroy, but little did I know the epiphanies that awaited when she joined forces with her Cherry Bomb Killer Perfumes partner Alexis Karl of Scents by Alexis fame for the Clarimonde Project and their Immortal Mine, nor what I would be inspired to write because of it. (There’s another kind of novel in that story/review just begging to be written!). These two have the kind of spectacular creative synergy between them I can only marvel at, marvel and be grateful I’m privileged to write about it. Coming soon are my reviews of their contributions for the Devilscent Project, and if perfumes are perilous – as I’ve always fervently believed – then this Devil and this Lilith, Queen of the Succubi – are surely proscribed by a top-secret Papal bull!

Neela Vermeire Creations/Neela Vermeire & Bertrand Duchaufour

Even in niche perfumery, there’s no shortage of hype – or launches. I’m well aware of all the lines I have yet to discover, or the one I’m dying to. So it takes more than PR machinery, a luxury label and ditto price tag to convince this perfume writer. It takes…that ribbon, that soul connection, that Aha! moment. When everyone started talking in hyper-excited tones about a new trio of perfumes unlike anything at all else around the time of the Elements NY exhibition, a line inspired by memories of that storied sub-continent of dreams that is India, my nose pricked up. When my sample set arrived on a gray day of forever goodbyes, I wondered whether it might be a sign of new beginnings. It was. For the trilogy and evolving stories that swirl and eddy within Trayee, Mohur and Bombay Bling are indeed those singular, vivid and personal narratives in perfume we all say we want to sniff and all too rarely do. All three reached out, grabbed my heart in fated, fabled, fragrant hugs and wouldn’t let me go. Their intricate, many-faceted wonders are there to stay!

Tauer Perfumes/Andy Tauer

When it comes to Andy Tauer, I usually joke I want to parade him down Fifth Avenue in a sedan chair with an adoring crowd throwing rose petals. I doubt this would ever happen – or even that the very modest Andy would stand for it! – but it says something of the impact he has – or the seismic potential of his perfumes. They are sometimes challenging and always unusual, and have done so much to reinvent my own perfume vernacular, no matter what the context or the materials. Whether rose – and no one does roses quite like Andy – incense, lavender or amber, or just the olfactory bomb that is Orange Star, I’ve had to really push my words to describe them and the places they took me to, and that, too is another kind of genius and another unique talent for which I can never thank him enough!

Primeval Forces are personal epiphanies, the ones you can’t live without and wouldn’t want to try. The ones you can find on yourself when all you want to do is feel that sigh of perfection in a world that all too often is anything but.

Do you have Primeval Forces, too?