Scentzilla!

Cincinnatus, who seemed pitch-black to them, as though he had been cut out of a cord-size block of night, opaque Cincinnatus would turn this way and that, trying to catch the rays, trying with desperate haste to stand in such a way as to seem translucent. Those around him understood each other at the first word, since they had no words that would end in an unexpected way, perhaps in some archaic letter, an upsilamba, becoming a bird or a catapult with wondrous consequences. In the dusty little museum on Second Boulevard, where they used to take him as a child, and where he himself would later take his charges, there was a collection of rare, marvelous objects, but all the townsmen except Cincinnatus found them just as limited and transparent as they did each other.

Vladimir Nabokov in Invitation to a Beheading

I dug up an old email I had sent, in which I described Alberto Absolu thusly: “…it takes such curious little turns. It’s sex and chocolate, a library filled with leather bound editions, good olive oil, warm cookies from the oven, a walk through a garden, and a very tiny petting zoo, all distilled into the crazy farmer’s market of its aroma.” This is wordy, and yet inadequate. The fragrance is an upsilamba. And all its wonderous consequences have left me scratching my head for another way to describe it than as precisely that. I give up. Quite simply, it is perfumer Alberto Morillas’ upsilamba.

Alberto Absolu was a perfume self-portrait composed by Morillas as part of Sacré Nobi’s /7S/ Olfactory Installation along with his Seven Deadly Sins. You can also read more about it at Chandler Burr’s website. Alas, it is currently unavailable, but I’m secretly hoping perhaps I can stir a wee bit of interest in it, so that it might be sold sooner rather than later.

Alberto Morillas’ “Lust” drops me into a daydream. But is it my own?

Once again I am struck by how very much some of these S-Perfumes are like listening to disembodied voices from another room. Wearing them feels almost like eavesdropping; I’m listening, ear pressed to the air, to a conversation already in congress.

To smell it on a paper strip reveals saffron, cedar trees, deckle edged musk, and an element that I might best liken to the taste of a Ricola lozenge.

Yet on my skin, the saffron comes alive. You know the feeling you get when a suppertable is set, and the food has just been placed on the table, still beautiful in its presentation? There’s this fleeting moment when you forget the growling hunger, and happily enjoy the anticipation of eating your supper. Lust wears as almost gourmand on me, but without smelling explicitly like a foody fragrance.

Were this fragrance limited to a saffron element, it would be easy to dismiss. However, it unfolds into a lovely waking dream.

To wear it is to float alongside a cream-cloud of saffron.

Then I am hovering over the Olympic forests, the woody aroma rising up to meet me through the sun-shifting mists.

I sense fire without heat, as if only knowing it exists somewhere in the distance.

The tangling begins: musky and ambery warmth loosely weave weft and warp, spice and wood.

I am lightly dressed by its sensual naughtiness. This naughtiness is refined to the point of subtlety on my skin. The animalic layer refrains from grossing me out, while skewing to fit the other, more prevalent, notes.

Whether Lust’s daydream is a product of my own imagination or Morillas’ engineering seems irrelevant. It’s a wonderful one to have either way.

(Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, Lust reminds me in some ways of Andy Tauer’s L’Air du Desert Marocain. I perceive them to exist on different sides of the same family.)

Lust can be obtained as a sample currently, but can be ordered in a full size bottle (approximately in late January or early February) ONLY if one has tried it as a sample from S-Perfume first. You can access the sample menu by clicking here.

Images starting from top: saffron stamens from itrademarket.com; redwood burl from sveneers.com; solar surface from spacedaily.com.

To find a link about S-Perfume’s Seven Deadly Sins, including Lust, please see my post about Sloth

Even when he was a puppy, my dog loved to sun bathe. He especially loves it when we go to my parents’ house, where he can stretch out and cook himself on their noonday-facing wooden porch. I’ve never quite gotten the idea behind the phrase “lazy as a dog.” When dogs lie in the sun, they’re always so committed to their relaxation. It’s not some activity they idly wander into; the act of a nap itself is a destination. This is Theirry Wasser’s creation Sloth.

S-Perfume Sloth is but one of “Seven Deadly Sins” from Sacre Nobi’s olfactory installation, a project consisting of seven different perfumers’ visions of the various vices. (Information about the installation can be located online.)

Despite an expectation that all these “Deadly Sins” might potentially exhibit some fragrantly surreal Hieronymous Bosch-like end panel warning, this scent seems to be lapping up the languid pleasure of “slothfulness.” One could argue the fragrance views sloth with irreverency. But then, I’ve always been fond of irreverency, and as an irreligious person I’ve never had a strong emotional connection to the concept of sin, anyhow.

Upon first spray, I am met with what smells like a splash of citrusy cologne, which burns off rapidly. A suggestion of a board still heated after piping hot loafs of bread have been removed forms itself in my mind. And then a crazy quilt of other perfumes pops into my head: I smell remnant pieces from the sillage of Helmut Lang parfum, Weil Zibeline, and Czech and Speake No. 88, all which are seemingly cross-stitched together by minute strokes of an orange-y note. But the lasting impression is one of sun baked wood. The longer the fragrance dwells on my skin, the more it dries out, until I am nearly convinced a piece of hot beach driftwood, long washed ashore and moistureless, has been affixed to my skin.

I perceive all this, and yet somehow am left with the mental image of sleeping dogs. Just soaking up the sun, and absorbing the reflected warmth from the deck wood, they’re content to lie there without thoughts of doing anything else. Because after all, they’re already busy.

Nobi did not set out to release any of the Sins for distribution. However, he notes “when Chandler Burr came to smell my art scents last summer, he was outraged that all my art scents were not accessible after the exhibitions. His point was that the scents should be available not necessarily for wearing them but for experiencing them.”

Sloth’s staying power isn’t great, but then, it wasn’t really developed as a scent that needs to stick to the skin. I’d guesstimate that I get two, maybe three, hours out it.

Of the various S-Perfumes I’ve tried, Sloth ranks as one I consider to have the most broad appeal for wear. Well, at least amongst perfume enthusiasts like myself, that is. It is one of two Sins currently available now for sampling only: Click here. According to Nobi, “the 15ml bottles will be available online late January or early February to those who have ordered the samples (in other words one has to try a sample first to order the full size product).”

Top image of Fred when he was about a year old. Second image is a detail of Dog Painting 46 by David Hockney. You can find my thoughts, some positive and some not so positive, on other S-Perfumes by clicking here.

100% Love was created by Sophia Grosjman as a female specific eau de toilette. I find this fragrance kind of depressing - according to it, love is really twee.

It opens up with what smells like Sweet Tarts candies, moving into a mix of strawberry and raspberry flavored Jello, with a heart that reminds me of rose pastilles and candy lipstick. I want to say there’s something like a neutered cardamom here, but that’s not quite right. I think this scent also hints at peach syrup as it dries down.

I read on S-Perfumes site the notes attributed, including chocolate and incense. Which, if I concentrate, I can perceive. Yet they don’t occur to me naturally. I wonder if the aim was to create a scented stageset of candelight and chocolate-dipped strawberries? This allusion mostly passes me by. Oh well, I guess I’m missing out on that.

100% Love is a very well considered fragrance, meaning all the notes are quite mindfully located. For what it is, I can appreciate that it’s a rich scent redolent of rosy berries. But good lord, is this one is SO not a good fit for me. It seems childish to me. My sister described it as the scent you’d make for a doll, and I can see where she’s coming from with that observation.

The lingering impression I get is of a syrupy prettiness. There are fans of that, and they would do fine with this scent. Especially those who are sick of watery fruity-florals, and long for something full-bodied. I think those folks might enjoy sampling it. It just happened to rub *me* the wrong way.

Image above is of an old poster from the “Love Is…” phenomenon from the 70s. My choice of images may possibly sting a bit too harshly, admittedly. But it’s the first visual I thought of when I smelled this perfume, so I thought I’d go with it.

As a scent experiment, I find S-ex quirky and interesting. As a perfume? Not so much.

The overriding notes on me are Sharpie markers and tightly stretched leather. I perceive tiny little hints of stringy kelp and softened water, however they don’t get much play. The Sharpie marker note is particularly off-putting for wear. S-ex is nicely weird for a perfume, but I seriously don’t know anyone who wants to smell like that. At all. I think Christophe Laudamiel deserves high marks for creating something new and unusual from an old note like leather, for sure. But no one will likely catch me wearing his creation.

The company S-Perfume is the brainchild of artist Nobi S-, who utilizes the skills of various perfumers to create the company’s scents. There is an openness at S-Perfumes about which perfumer made which scent, and if you click on each scent, it will list the name of that perfumer as a hyperlink, which you can further click to read a resume of other perfumes that person is credited with. I love that. I wish other companies would take heed.

I’d like to take a moment to comment on the packaging for the wee atomizers for Jet-Scent. The bottles are imprinted with an “s” shaped sperm, and the words “for surfers.” Well. Gross. Maybe I just have a filthy mind, but I’m sure I don’t have to be explicit in describing what I instantly imagine is the kind of surfing that seems to imply. Is it a joke? Is it not? I honestly am unsure.

Both Jet-Scent and the version of it called S-Perfume list a “spirit of life” note. Seriously? “Spirit of life?!” Oh, barf. I sure hope that’s a joke, too.

Some scents scream at you, some use an indoor voice, some manage to stage-whisper. These perfumes? Are disembodied voices from another room.

Now then, I’ll move on to the Alberto Morillas created ‘fume itself, which wears much like an eau de toilette. Jet-Scent opens with a saline blast. And as that evaporates, the fragrance next takes me back to a workshop I used to work in making picture frames. After spending just an hour at the miter saw I’d be enveloped in wood-hazed air, smelling the particulates of the fresh dust and the layers of newly exposed wood. It’s really the particular sort of smell you’d find in any woodworking shop. Next I smell this accord that is almost like a salad of wild baby greens and chopped herbs. But it’s somehow different, and more raw than that. It’s one of those smells I think I “know” but can’t quite place. Jet-Scent throws off sillage with these notes, but it’s mixed with traces of something that smells like a hair salon, and a note that reminds me of the putty we used to fill the joins of our frames. Despite the description from S-Perfumes, I really get no musk from this scent at all, and the vanilla is particularly indirect to the point of being mostly imperceptible. I’d describe this scent as salty, woody, dusty, and green.

Of all the S-Perfumes, Jet-Scent would be my favorite, but sadly it’s too faint and distant on my skin to warrant a purchase. Well, not that I could anyhow. Jet-Scent isn’t available for purchase online, and I only received it because it came with my samples.

First photo of Jet-Scent bottle. Second photo taken this afternoon of a trail of jet exhaust against the sun. Music clip is from “Disembodied Voices” by the Finn Bros. off their Everyone is Here album.

S-Perfume (the scent, not the whole company) is an amped up version of Jet-Scent. The remix of Alberto Morillas’ original is credited to Christophe Laudamiel. While it is indeed more strongly concentrated, it wears mostly like an eau de parfum than a parfum on me. The greens that were salad-ish in Jet-Scent predominate the remix, and feel somewhat darker to me here. The woody sawdust that floats in the air with Jet-Scent take a backseat to the herbally greens. I still get sillage of hair salon and framing putty (when I chance to catch whiffs of my own, that is.) But I miss the wood a lot, and if anything I prefer to layer this with Jet-Scent to create a slightly monochromatic depth, and to bump up from the poorer staying power of Jet-Scent used alone. Of course, I don’t think everyone will possess the same sentimentatlity for a haze of wood dust that I do. Consequently, I might suggest ordering a sample of S-Perfume, which also comes with a small spritzer of Jet-Scent so you can try them both at the same time.

Photo taken of part of lunch today.