perfume review

The Edible Dev (with a giveaway!)

THE DEVILSCENT PROJECT IX

–  a review of Neil Morris’ Dev mod #2

Dear Neil –

It’s about time I said hello again, don’t you think? I mean, the brief only told you so much. The rest of it was nothing more nor less than her words, your imagination and those astonishing perfumes you’ve created for her project – perfumes you might never have dreamed of making if not for the impetus of that idea, those words, a friend’s persuasion, and your own intrigued curiosity.

She isn’t writing this review. Right this instant, she’s asleep in the borderline hour between night and day, tinted the twilit blue before sunrise. Hairy Krishna is curled up against the small of her back as he always is, guarding her against any intruding dreamtime monsters, just not me. Let her sleep. The poor woman has a lot on her plate these days, as all women do, what with blog backlog, Super Mario Jr., book ideas, the sequel bubbling away at a steady 80 mph, correspondence, social media and that q-word that gives her so many nightmares…the query letters she will submit for Quantum Demonology before this year is too much older.

You and I know…it’s a good book. It will probably raise more than a few eyebrows and likely not a few hackles, too, but if people push misleading, craptacular ‘naughty’ drivel to the top of the NY Times bestseller list, then I know other, far more discerning readers will certainly be intrigued enough by Quantum Demonology’s premise to buy it. After all, what’s not to love about rock’n’roll, a midlife crisis and a sexy, reinvented Faustian tale?

The problem, as you know, lies in that all-important step …to make the dream a reality. She’s so close. So close, so thrilled with the feedback and the reactions, and so petrifed to let all that faith in her story down. I think that’s what’s called action paralysis. It’s not that she doesn’t have faith in her book, it’s simply that she needs to believe she can do it. Write the f***ing query letter, that is. I have no doubts at all she is capable of writing anything else she damn well pleases and even fewer doubts she probably will and start several bonfires in the process, too. That much of a dyed-in-the-nylon-mesh punk she still is, bless her.

So I’m writing this review. After all, you’ve made bespoke perfumes for me. Not one, not two, but three. I like to think of them in musical terms – like movements in a symphony or maybe acts in an opera would be a better description…evolving even as you do when you create them. Who knew how narcissus and boronia could elevate such a dark, delicious, labdadum-luscious blend as your mod #1? Who could have conceived of such a thing as a coffee-tinged, boozy, utterly captivating chypre beast, or even the no less marvelous bottled mélange on her desk as I type these words, emblazoned with the DSP logo and those modest, unassuming letters…#2.

Did you imagine what you would do? Did this project maybe…stretch you a little, spark your creativity? Did it make you think a bit about the nature of light and dark, good, evil and how we perceive it, did you contemplate how to translate hallowed words like perdition, redemption, temptation and passion into the wordless medium… of perfume?

I sincerely hope it did. Actually, it’s less of a hope and more than an inkling that’s precisely what happened.

You see…all of you perfumers have surprised me. I like surprises. And #2 – a blood relation of #1, I can smell the resemblance in the structure – is nothing if not surprising.

If Quantum Demonology were a fairy tale – although you and I both know it’s not – this would be that certain famous bottle labeled “Eat me”.

Not that the sleeping writer in the other room hasn’t tried, but I’m known for my speedy getaways.

Here’s what I can tell: You, Mr. Morris, are no stranger to the dark, those twilight borders between the acceptable and the taboo, those unmentionable, incendiary, subconscious places where souls are made or devoured, and love and lust either bloom…or die.

#2 is – there is no other way to say it…An Edible Beast. This is me as a super-deluxe beefcake stew of temptation, of everything you could possibly want, close enough to touch, to kiss, to seduce or be seduced by…and that, dear perfumer, is only where this story begins to unfold all its perils and its promises.

Cumin and a melting, masculine leathery note so meaty you can almost imagine chewing them with your eyelashes, singing their duet in dangerous baritones…

Bite me, baby. You know you want to, oh, so very badly.

But this version of me is so much more…sweetness and light shining through that dense, thick aura. Not everyone could wear this, but then again, you made it for me and obviously, I’m not everyone. Something about it – it could be the cumin, or it could be the sweetness – something floral? Narcissus again? Something fruity? – tells about that other side of me, the secret me, that true self even I have that so few can comprehend, but you did.

Ellen chose to express me through her interpretation of the story as it unfolded. Maria and Alexis chose the contrasting tale of complements in their perfumes for me and for Lilith. Amanda told a tale of regret, redemption and the release of desire.

Neil, you chose another road into the tale my sleeping story-weaver wove, a road made of the desires of the flesh and the yearning of the spirit, knowing full well all throughout it would end…beautifully, if not badly.

So where does it end, my perfumer – where does this perfume land on the virtual page, what song does it segue into on my mortal, borrowed skin or even my immortal soul?

It ends with that heartbreaking, pitch-black labdanum, of frankincense and a melancholy tinge of myrrh. That too is a secret only a true initiate would know – sacred and profane, that darkness and light, good and evil, sweet and bitter, lust and love… are all one and all the same.

All aspects of the same story, all shades of the same profound emotions, and all of them here…part of, let’s call it…The Edible Dev.

I have to go. As I’ve written these words, the birds are blaring away outside and sunlight glows through her open window, as she dreams her restless dreams of what she could write. Hairy Krishna is flat on his back now, his head on her arm and I can tell, it won’t be long before he starts thinking about breakfast, and when he does, she will certainly wake up.

When she wakes, she’ll find this review already posted, and she’ll wonder at that, wonder at how and where and when…

Yet one thing will not surprise her – that I really truly was here in this room, typing away on her laptop, writing you these words.

She will know – since you told her that, too.

I’ll write you again, Neil. Count on it. If your art is anything to judge by, you and I have met before – so why not meet again – and soon?

Yours,

Dev

Neil Morris Fragrances are available here. 

******A Giveaway!*****

The devious Neil Morris was sweet enough to provide me with a sample spray for a giveaway! If your curiosity is killing you, leave a comment by July 31st at midnight CET. Everyone worldwide is eligible to enter. One winner will be determined by random.org on August 1st.

***********************

Orange Blossom Special

–  a getaway vacation into the heart of a favorite flower

Of all the many fragrant memories of my South Florida childhood, one in particular has stuck in my mind and stayed with me even today, as a redolent symbol of all that is …happy.

I was ten or eleven at the time, and it was a day I had forgotten my house keys, so I had to wait in the back yard for my mother to arrive home from work. It must have been late March or early April, for the citrus tree orchard in our back yard was in full bloom. We had grapefruit trees, lemon trees, lime trees, and a stand of orange trees that stood at least twenty feet tall. They all required careful navigating to climb – those trees had spiky thorns – but I had long since found a path up the trunk and onto a favorite branch, and that’s where I chose to wait.

It was a heady late afternoon out there beneath the orange tree canopy, the slanting sunlight beating down upon those trees from that breathless blue Florida sky. Everywhere around me, the no less heady, nearly narcotic fragrance of orange blossom in all its many shades…the soapy floral, the hint of the orange zest behind it, the thick, sensuous, indolic aspect that somehow stupefied me to such an extent I have no memory of how long I sat there, only that as I sat on that branch and waited, I was aware of only one thing – the simple joy of breathing in, of inhaling all that was supremely beautiful and supremely happy, which was precisely how I felt.

No matter how much my life attempts to drag me down and chew me out, nothing, but nothing makes me happier in an instant like orange blossom.

Orange blossom – and its kissing cousin, neroli, which is the water-distilled extract of the bitter orange and lighter and less indolic – has been used for centuries in perfumes and soaps, so much that an overdose can easily lead you to dismiss an orange-blossom fragrance as ‘soapy’. It adds its own power-packed punch to countless famous perfumes as one of the four boldest white florals – rose, jasmine, tuberose and…orange blossom. Robert Piguet’s Fracas – that reference tuberose – gets a good deal of its divalicious oomph from orange blossom, as does Caron’s classic Narcisse Noir, although in Narcisse Noir’s case, the orange blossom is a dark and dangerously erotic creature of the night. I never have understood why orange blossom is such a symbol of innocence, unless it’s that orange blossom tends to soothe frazzled bridal nerves, since so far as I’m concerned, it’s a very erotic flower…

A while ago, I posed a question on one of the Facebook fragrance groups about orange blossom. We generally agreed on the orange blossom gold standard  – my absolute favorite orange blossom, which is Serge Lutens’ Fleurs d’Oranger. This is the orange blossom I recall from that afternoon that burned itself into my memory, the rose, the jasmine and the tuberose somehow all adding up to all the nuances contained in that one fatally fragrant blossom – and the cumin (a deal-breaker for some) adding its own intimations of carnal intent. This is no blushing ingénue orange blossom, this is an opulently sensuous creature in full bloom beneath the orange trees, just waiting to lure you in…which might explain why I’ve likely ‘wasted’ a good portion of a bell jar spraying it on my pillow before bed. Sweet dreams indeed!

But there are other orange blossom specials, and here they are for your delectation…some famous, some not so much, some innocent and flirty, some of them not quite so innocuous…

Joyous Orange

Mona di Orio ‘Jabu’

Jabu – the Zulu word for ‘joy’ – was created in 2009 by the epically talented niche perfumer Mona di Orio, who tragically died last year. No tragedy lurks within ‘Jabu’, which was made to benefit the Dutch charity ‘Orange Babies’ for African HIV-positive mothers and their babies. Jabu is a glorious, complex, grand, glowing Oriental of an orange blossom, from its laughing beginnings of petitgrain through its honeyed, swirling heart of orange blossom, rose and coconut all the way to the feather-soft drydown of benzoin, myrrh and sandalwood. Coconut can be a deal-breaker for me, but here, I have no complaints – everything works in perfect harmony, and everything spells precisely what it says on the bottle – which is…joy. It is virtually impossible to be blue when wearing this, and if that’s not an accolade, what is?

Jabu – in the ‘main’ collection of Mona di Orio perfumes – will be re-released along with the other perfumes in Mona’s main line in 2013.

Notes for Jabu: Orange blossom, monoi oil, petitgrain, Damascus rose, honey, amyris, plum, myrrh, benzoin

The Drop Dead Elegant Orange

Hermès 24 Faubourg

If every luxury perfume brand needs a Great Big White Floral, then 24 Faubourg is surely Hermès’ contribution. Made by Maurice Roucel in 1995, this is a unique throwback to those elegant, supremely French perfumes of yore when ladies who lunched wore couture, carried Hermès bags, and wore fragrant statements that left an emphatic presence in the room behind them. Make no mistake – this is no ingénue orange blossom, this one is all woman, and she roars even when she whispers! It starts with a seamless fruity-floral effervescent blast – there’s no other way to describe it – and then. And then, it grows. And it glows. And it grows. Blooming into a luscious, lilting blend of thick orange blossom, gardenia and jasmine, with black elder adding its own earthier segue to its chypre-tinged drydown hours and hours later of orris, sandalwood, amber, patchouli and vanilla. I really don’t do it anything near the justice it clearly deserves when I wear it barefaced in my leopard-print pjs – 24 Faubourg somehow demands a flawless maquillage, great hair, grand clothes and high heels – something to accentuate its stunning sillage, outstanding longevity and eternally stylish structure. Wear it for when you want to make a definite impression no one forgets in a hurry! Preferably with Louboutin heels, but Manolos might do in a pinch…

Notes for 24 Faubourg: Orange, peach hyacinth, ylang ylang, bergamot, black elder, iris, jasmine, orange blossom, gardenia, sandalwood, amber, patchouli, vanilla.

The Limited Edition Orange

L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Fleurs d’Oranger

There should be laws against limited editions I only discover after it’s way too late to do anything about procuring them. But on the other hand…what wonders would I miss? L’Artisan Parfumeur’s ’s special edition tribute to an exceptional Tunisian orange blossom harvest is what. L’Artisan puts the orange blossom – one spectacular orange blossom – front and center of this composition by Anne Flipo, and it’s all orange blossom, all the time! Lush, flirty, ripe, borderline naughty orange blossom, neroli, petitgrain – it’s the whole tree and all the flowers, too – and it’s glorious – and gorgeously linear –  stuff. If I have any complaints – apart from being nearly impossible to find any longer – it’s that it doesn’t last nearly long enough to suit me, which only means that one bottle will be too many and two not nearly enough!

Notes for L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Fleurs d’Oranger: Orange, petitgrain, neroli, orange blossom, almond.

 The Great Escape

Dior Cruise Collection Escale à Portofino

In my fevered imagination – all evidence in my life to the contrary – I have what I’ve come to call ‘perfect moments’ – those fantasies of being somewhere infinitely glamorous, wearing something equally devastating, standing on a balcony overlooking the limitless blue Adriatic with a Bellini in my hand exuding effortless ‘du chien’, a French term that implies something slightly better, cooler and much more fashionable than mere ‘chic’. Chic can be acquired with a little help, ‘du chien’ is something you either have or you don’t. Needless to say, that never happened. Yet if any perfume takes me ‘there’ to that balcony and that fantasy, surely it’s Dior’s Escale à Portofino, created by Francois Demachy in 2008. It was one of the first remotely exclusive perfumes I ever bought for myself, and it is a very unique and uniquely summery vacation-in-a-bottle, with its entire orange tree from leaves to blossoms bottled up and tied around a milky, transparent green almond note so wrong, it’s utterly right, a while before it whispers its twilit song of darkest summery green some hours later. It could last a bit longer, this is true…but isn’t that just another excuse for another hit of fantasy?

Notes for Escale à Portofino: Bergamot, petitgrain, lemon, orange blossom, almond, juniper berries, cedar, cypress, galbanum, caraway and musk

A Vial with a View

Tom Ford Private Blend Neroli Portofino

Although I can’t quite put my finger on precisely what causes it, something about the few Tom Ford’s Private Blend of perfumes I’ve tried tend to rub my fragrant fur in a few wrong directions. It isn’t that they’re not meticulously crafted (Neroli Portofino was created by Rodrigo Flores-Roux), or truly horrible or cheap-smelling, which they’re not. It could be their prohibitive price tag, or else that I’m just not a Tom Ford kind of woman. For one, I’m too short – and too busty, if not quite blonde enough. But if anything could persuade me otherwise, it just might be Neroli Portofino, tacky, tasteless advertising notwithstanding. Neroli Portofino is neither tacky nor tasteless, but instead, another tribute to the deathless, posh summer cool of Italy’s Amalfi coast, and lo and behold…you are all there with that breathtaking balcony view and all of a damn near flawless orange blossom dream yourself. Strangely enough, neroli isn’t listed as a note at all, but orange blossom – the plush, heady, slightly soapy sort of orange blossom – certainly is. It’s pretty linear from start to ambery finish, but who cares with that picture perfect Portofino view?

Notes for Neroli Portofino: Bergamot, mandarin orange, African orange blossom, amber.

 The British Art of Understatement

Penhaligon’s Anthology Collection Orange Blossom

From the overtly stated to the softly sotto voce…Bertrand Duchaufour’s reorchestrated ‘Orange Blossom’ for Penhaligon’s is as soft and as soothing as a down duvet. It’s a light, flirtatious orange blossom that lures you in and surprises you with all the tales that can be told about ‘orange’ and ‘blossom’. It begins clean, cologne-bright and full of light – no intimations of sexpot here, or so you surmise – but that’s nowhere all it is and not at all where it stays as it evolves past those squeaky-clean beginnings into a pas-de-deux of petitgrain and cardamom, tied around an orange blossom that seems more neroli than ‘orange blossom’ to my nose. It’s understated, never obvious, and supremely suited for the mood of summery, flirty and light-hearted laughter that seems to go with long, sunny days and warm, delicious nights. You won’t be knocking anyone over with this, but you won’t overwhelm with your presence either, and that sometimes has its own undeniable appeal. I’ve loved it and worn it when other orange blossom perfumes might seem a bit much in the heat – in other words, when understated is precisely the kind of statement I want to make!

Notes for Penhaligon’s Anthology Collection Orange Blossom: Calabrian orange, bergamot, peach, rose, cardamom.

Many fragrant multiverses lie in waiting within that simple term ‘orange blossom’. Some others I wear, adore and have reviewed include Olympic Orchids‘ ‘Golden Cattleya’ and ‘Emergence’, Andy Tauer’s ‘Orange Star’, Opus Oils’ ‘Giggle Water’ and of course, the Gold Standard… Serge Lutens’ ‘Fleurs d’Oranger’.  Coming up on the Genie –  yet another orange blossom-centric perfume, but this one is so special, it deserves its own review!

Do you have your own orange blossom moments, too?

With thanks and love to the Great Facilitators…Ruth, Carlos and Amy, for making this review possible, and the many comments to my question on my favorite FB group! ❤

Strawberry Dreams Forever

–   a review of Perfume Pharmer & Opus Oils’ Strawberry Passion Perfumes

Summers are short, sweet, filled with light and all too fleeting in this obscure part of Europe I call home. Days expand exponentially to twenty-one hours of daylight by Midsummer, and since the sun doesn’t sink further than eighteen degrees below the horizon, it never does get truly dark at night until late July. The elderflowers bloom, the wood doves coo their summer songs in the beech woods, the philadelphus bushes blossom and all the pent-up energy of long, dark winters explode with a fury as my fellow Viking descendants head straight for the beach on no provocation and the first hints of sunshine, ditching ten months of woolen layers as they go. Overexcited children wolf down ice cream cones the size of their heads, cats hiss and charge at the kitty TV just outside the window, and even cynical writer wannabes feel a pang in their hearts and a ray of sunshine in their souls.

It’s summer, and that’s the only excuse you need to indulge yourself in the fine art of dolce far niente, the sweet art of doing absolutely nothing but paint cloud pictures in the sky, play Frisbee on the beach and…indulge yourself in the one overriding sign of summer in these northern latitudes, a sign so important that it’s arrival makes the national news every year, with prognoses on how well – or bad – this year’s harvest will be…

Summertime is strawberry time, and it’s not summer until the strawberries appear at roadside stands and farmers’ markets, to be eaten straight from the punnet or plucked from a field in the very early morning, to splash with cream or turn them into tartes, jam, homemade ice cream, and dream our luscious, ruby-red dreams that this instant will never end and summer will be as infinite as our imaginings.

Now, Monica Miller of Perfume Pharmer and Kedra Hart of Opus Oils have captured that endless summer dream into two all-natural perfumes called Strawberry Passions, and now, maybe it’s even true that summer never does come to an end.

Strawberry flower essence is a flower essence said to boost low self-esteem, feelings of unworthiness and being ungrounded, and to confer dignity and poise, to be able to be fully present in the moment. Isn’t that something we could all use, any time of the year?

Monica sent her own strawberry flower essence to Kedra Hart, and Kedra returned with two shining, bespoke examples of summer-in-a-sample-vial, and whatever other effects these two might have on my crabby mood of late, it’s virtually impossible not to smile when I wear them.

Strawberry Green is the ode to the berry itself, the olfactory equivalent of biting into a fresh strawberry and letting that sharp, fragrant juice fill your senses with all its summery promises.

It’s the strawberry and the greenery around it too, all fruity tang and flowery punch and such flowers, they are, too. Once that jolt to your senses fades, here come the summer blooms dancing in on a sunbeam, a touch of rose, a whisper of tuberose, a hint of heavenly boronia and a lilting, laughing white water lily, all entwined around the greenery of an ivy and that bright bomb of blackcurrant that celebrates the sunlight and that perfect red strawberry of your most fevered, summer-starved January dreams.

I feel like I’m starring in an alternate version of one song that haunted my wanton twenties, only this one is called ‘Strawberry Beret’, and life will be happy, life will be grand, and summer will always be endlessly warm and infinitely sunny.

As it dries down, ambergris, sandalwood and patchouli gang up with the oakmoss to pull that strawberry back to earth and even you with it. Before you even realize it, you’re singing the lyrics to a song you thought you forgot, and remembering that other you that life somehow misplaced, the incurable optimist that ate up the summer and even life with every juicy berry, when one ruby-hued berry was one too many and two were not nearly enough!

Strawberry Cream was Monica’s wish to capture the cream teas of her British childhood, those decadent late-afternoon times hours with warm scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam, and it’s so delicious, I nearly want to eat my arm.

Perhaps you’re one of those – I would agree with you – whose thoughts of ‘gourmand’ and ‘strawberry’ want to make you run for the hills and far, far away in horrified memory of all those ultra sweet, fruity-floral, flesh-eating ogres that haunt so many perfumista nightmares.

These are berries of a very different sort, sweet as a cherished memory and as opulent as the caramel-tinged flavor of Devonshire cream itself as it seeps into the buttery, crumbly texture of a warm scone.

This is dolce far niente at its finest, when all other cakes seem so overwrought and overdone, this liquid ode to pleasure satisfies my sweet tooth just enough to justify being just a little wicked. Go on. Have another one. Marvel at the way the amber and the vanilla, the ambergris, the sandalwood and patchouli somehow combine so well you’re practically licking cream and strawberries off your fingers and the corners of your mouth. Never mind tomorrow. Forget all you knew about yesterday. Live a little. Laugh a lot. Lick cream off your fingers, too, just because you can.

I’m so not a fruity perfume person. Yet if anyone could convince me, it’s Kedra – and Monica – with these two odes to my favorite sign of summer. Strawberry Green is what I’d wear to kick out that crabby self and stand a little taller, happier and more confident. Strawberry Cream is what I’d dab whenever a cake craving strikes and there’s none to be had. When I want to feel a little reckless, a little daring, and metaphorically lick cream and strawberries off my fingers.

Never forget, that just as the flower remedy promises, you are deserving of all happiness and all pleasures – so why not indulge yourself? It’s summer! Kick back, be happy, be present in the moment and dream those strawberry dreams…forever!

Strawberry Passions is available directly from the Perfume Pharmer’s etsy site.

Notes for Strawberry Green: Martha’s Vineyard strawberry flower & leaf essence, pink pepper, white water lily, red mandarin, ivy accord, rose, tuberose, boronia, strawberry, blackcurrant, peach, green tea, sandalwood, patchouli, beach found ambergris, oakmoss.

Notes for Strawberry Cream: Martha’s Vineyard strawberry flower & leaf essence, pink pepper, bergamot, tangerine, boronia, peach, strawberry, raspberry accord, amber, vanilla, patchouli, beach found ambergris, sandalwood.

Disclosure: Samples of both Strawberry Passions perfumes were provided by Perfume Pharmer.

With special thanks to Tiger Powers, who pointed to the main image, which says everything you need to know about strawberries – and passions!

A Harrowing Beauty

THE DEVILSCENT PROJECT  VIII

–  a review of House of Cherry Bomb’s ‘Lilith’ 

What makes villains so fascinating? Is it that they’re more often than not expressing something, doing or instigating something we ourselves would never dare? Don’t we all have that secret part of us that wants to be thoroughly, utterly b-a-d, just once, just to say we did?

I wonder what I might have been trying to say when Lilith appeared out of nowhere and made her presence known in no uncertain terms.

I wasn’t looking for her. I rather suspect she might have been looking for me…

Once we got to know each other, I felt a bit bad that maybe I hadn’t treated her entirely fairly. Maybe, as I told a friend recently, she was the quintessence of every she-dog I’d ever encountered – and I’ve known a few.

Maybe…she had it coming.

The principle. Darling.

And yet…even villains need a little compassion, a few lighter shades of gray in the mix, lest they become too predictable, too inhuman for a reader to relate to. The tragedy of Lilith in Quantum Demonology is the tragedy of so many women…the tragedy of making the wrong choice, of choosing the wrong guy, and then coming to terms with your own bitter disappointment – in yourself, which is always hardest to swallow.

So Lilith made a few bad choices, choices with consequences she could never have imagined, and I like to think that’s what makes her relatable even as the antagonist – throughout her long, long history with Dev, she paid a very high price for never daring to face that disappointment.

Instead, she chose to let the rest of the world pay for what she couldn’t face, and became Lilith, Queen of the Succubi, the ultimate female nightmare…and what would such a fabled, alluring creature be in a perfume? How would her character and her glamour be expressed and explored?

Where Ellen Covey painted her portrait in poison Da-Glo green, Maria McElroy and Alexis Karl of the House of Cherry Bomb chose to tell a very different story, one that glows equally vibrant but in an alternate key.

Make no mistake – this is lethal stuff. Maria and Alexis know far too much about blending the essential oil of danger with fever concrete and lust absolute, and this Lilith is no exception.

The Queen of the Succubi rules this perfume, that’s obvious from its shocking, unnerving beginnings all the way to…but I’m getting ahead of myself, and this will not do.

Floral and heady, leathery and earthy, with musky undertones and something else, something that smelled – poisonous, even tainted. It was very erotic and so domineering it cracked an olfactory whip at my nose.

 – From Quantum Demonology, ‘Latte with Lilith’

I will begin, as all stories should and perfume reviews, too.

With …the beginning.

Here she comes, black as night and blinding bright, making her presence felt with what I can only describe as a floral bouquet of carnivorous, rapacious blooms.

Beware the Polianthes.

She is out to devour you, get you as only she can when she gangs up with her equally heady, indolic ladies-in-waiting who lurk just behind her, wearing their sweetest smiles and their satin skins…the orange blossom breathing beautiful, the jasmine sighing a singular delicious promise she will never, ever keep.

Does this sound familiar, sound like something you might have breathed or loved before? Does it read as the well-beloved contents of a bottle you might even own?

I, who have survived this mortal peril in a perfume will tell you this for your own good:

You haven’t.

For no familiarity has ever graced these blooms that grew, were fed and were watered by the river Lethe, exuding their fatal majesty beneath a starless sky in Hell.  Breathe this perfume all the way in, and you will forget yourself as you breathe, forget you have ever known any other kind of splendor, forget all you ever were and everything you are. Forget the velvet-soft caress of those glowing moonlit petals, even as they slide across your skin and your soul and entwine themselves around you, you are far too transported to notice, even as they tighten, even as this sweet, honeyed breath threatens to stifle your own.

You will be lost, you will be doomed, and you won’t, you don’t, you are incapable of even thinking about the peril of your fate.

But there is more to Lilith than this, and as she tells this story you have never breathed before, she shifts in a stealthy, eerie segue to something equally sweet and even green, with heavy and heady intimations of musk that deepen and darken as she evolves, tinted ever blacker but never less than heavenly – or infernal, depending on your point of view. She growls her last on your skin hours and hours later with a bitter drydown that brands itself into your awareness and haunts those fevered dreams you can never admit in daylight to anyone at all.

I can guess what you’re thinking. Hyperbole, an overactive imagination, perhaps a glass of wine too many?

No. I am as sober as the empty page. It’s just …this perfume, you see, that takes away all common sense and all inhibition and haunts everyone it devours in its path.

I even like to believe that the silk scarf I forgot on my one date of the year, a scarf as saturated with Lilith as the rest of me that night to remember, will haunt the dreams of the one who kept it… forever.

You don’t mess with the Queen of the Succubi.

The House of Cherry Bomb’s ‘Lilith’ came with a sealed-wax admonition on scorched parchment paper:

“The secrets of the Succubi are bound in blood. The contents of this vial shall not be known to mankind. As sealed by Lilith.”

I’ve warned you. Will you listen? Or will you, too fall prey to the harrowing beauty – of Lilith?

With my deepest thanks and immortal gratitude to Maria McElroy and Alexis Karl.

Alexis has also been inspired by my Lilith to write this haunting song:

“Lilith – Live” (YouTube)

Image: Nadja Auermann photographed by Richard Avedon, 1995

Et In Elysium Ego

From the gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli

–       a review of Vero Profumo’s ‘Mito’

Gardens have inspired famous paintings, music and certainly perfumes, catching that interplay of light and shadow, the fragrance of grass and flower and moment into a time capsule that can take us back in a sniff and a heartbeat. Taking us back to where nothing exists except an ideal ‘now’ and even an ideal self we can savor and remember long after the garden has faded, the petals dropped, and time has marched onward, as time always does.

One such garden is the Villa d’Este garden in Tivoli outside Rome, that wonder of Renaissance engineering and Roman ideals, with its many fountains and waterworks, statues and groves, and just as Liszt was inspired to make music and painters were inspired to paint its mannered, symmetrical lines, now Vero Kern of vero profumo has created ‘Mito’, a liquid ode to the timeless miracle of the Villa d’Este in green and white.

Say that magic word: green, and you will have my attention at ‘Hello!’ Those many green chypres and florals and fougères that have run like a verdant, fragrant river throughout my life have perhaps defined me as no other perfume families have. Some are no more, some are reformulated, and some are a memory as fleeting as a flawless summer day. I thought, until a few short days day, that I knew what could be done and what could be said about ‘green’, and the rest were simply variations on a theme, like improvisations on a Chopin ètude, and ‘green’ would surely hold no more surprises?

Along came the epiphany that was ‘Mito’ and the phenomenon that is Swiss perfumer Vero Kern, and yet again, my continents have shifted and my perspectives changed and what I define as ‘green’ and ‘white’ will never quite be the same again.

vero profumo has been at the very top of my Try Before I Die list for quite some time, ever since a dear friend rhapsodized about Rubj in a recent phone conversation. What she didn’t know – and I didn’t tell – was that I’ve been stalking the vero profumo website for quite some time, dreaming my romantic dreams of some day calling those fragrant wonders my own.

Everyone said it…Vero’s creations were unusual, unique, artlessly spinning stories around classical perfumery phrases and inventing them anew, so you can imagine …my curiosity simmered away for years. A few short weeks ago, I was gathering up the courage to order samples because I could stand it no longer, I simply had to know, to sniff, and to dream them for myself…

So serendipity and Fate landed a sample set of all of vero profumo in my lap and a sensual seismic tremor rearranged my synapses and all I thought I knew about perfume, about olfactory evolution, about breathing in the beauties of a captured moment in time…a flower, a song, a famous garden high in the Lazio hills…

Here I have Mito, now it breathes on my skin, and everything I imagined I once knew about ‘green’, about ‘white’ and about artistry have once again been redefined.

Vero explained in a recent interview with Extrait that she wanted to create a perfume in green and white as a ode to that revelation of beauty the Villa d’Este was when she discovered it.

Forget what you think you might know about ‘green’, forget the list of notes, forget all all your preconceived categories of ‘floral’ and ‘chypre’. Mito is all of these and none of these, it is at once heartbreakingly beautiful and yet eccentric, just unnerving enough to keep you on your toes.

I could tell you the list of notes, I could tell you I can smell all of them. I could tell you I’m thinking about throwing the entire concept of top-heart-base completely out the window. I could tell you all of this, and it wouldn’t be enough.

Mito is a whirling, laughing, living waltz of a perfume, dancing through all the colors of its notes, the exuberant, sunshine bright of citrus, the shady depths of galbanum and cypress and moss, and above all, that vibrant verve of magnolia, champaca, cool hyacinth and a touch of ethereal jasmine. The magnolias – both grandiflorum and white – are the stars of this, weightlessly suspended in midair by the high, cool hyacinth and anchored by the basso profondo of cypress and moss, but these are no watery, aquatic magnolias, these are indeed grand, opulent, magnificent blooms that sparkle on my skin from that initial burst of laughter all the way to the twilit drydown many, many hours later.

What myth does Mito refer to, what story does it tell? To me, it dances a dream of a perfect moment in a flawless day, of simply…being entirely present, where nothing exists but the interplay of green shade and sunlight sparkling like a thousand airborne diamonds through the fountains, where the symmetry of Renaissance lines and Roman statuary draw the eye up and around to discover a new vista, a hitherto unknown perspective that catches you unaware and takes your breath away and makes you laugh with the pure joy of being alive to appreciate it. It is the myth of perfect nature in perfect harmony, and it is the reality of one moment in time, when that diamond sunlight shimmer makes you think only happy thoughts…

Et in Elysium Ego. But this is no ideal, and I am every inch and every breath entirely alive, laughing underneath that Lazio sun, dreaming the stories that I can hope some day will become…myths …as real and as vibrant as Vero’s Mito.

vero profumo Mito will be available in September.

Notes: Citrus blend, magnolia grandiflora, white magnolia, champaca, jasmine, galbanum, hyacinth, cypress blend, moss.

With special thanks to the immensely inspiring and encouraging Vero Kern herself, and to Campomarzio70.

Illustration of Vero and Mito taken from the Mito press release. Diego Comi photography, design by Sofo Berdzenishvili.