The perfume is matte and participates in an aesthetics of silence. Moth is impeccably clean and light: a quiet flap of its wings a gust through a residuum of scented dust. It is full of sumptuous ingredients yet preserves a magnificent sense of space; it is an aerial perfume. Even the most subtle and silent of gestures produces aesthetic impact. That is, a silent force is a force no less. This nocturnal scene is a serene one, haunting but tranquil, without menacing shadows but the soft and delicate engulf of moonlight.

Hiris is enveloped in a veil of gossamer silk the colour of morning mist, the wrinkly petals and soft folds of the iris flower awakening, secreting their paradoxically dry and vegetal yet fresh and floral-green smell, in an atmosphere faintly reminiscent of ozone. Hiris is transparent yet powerful - and this is Giacobetti’s skill - who softens and fades opaque raw materials like a painter working on watercolour until its hues vanish into an aqueous wash, without losing the appearance of its form. Hiris has no weight nor outline, but its atmosphere is expansive.

“Verveine is the hesperidic note most conducive to bucolic oneirism, thanks to the strength of its green character that seems to trail into new territories altogether. In this chaos of organoleptic impressions, it is possible to seemingly stop the scent in the midst of its movement, so as to understand just what is happening in this dream. This is the source of Verveine d’Eugene’s interest, as Heeley straightens these lines, allowing them a sort of bursting melodic progression played out in a major key. Its punctuations are indeed accidental notes, and Heeley allows these accidentals to ring in olfactory space before they come to dominate and disrupt. It is restraint amongst exuberance”

“This is an elision of fragrant gestures that create the singular smell of Castile soap. A salubrious unguent, it is a solar exhalation in a Mediterranean dialect … I will wear Cythère for its interesting play of unusual olfactory colour and for its strange and slow heat – baked into the particles that constitute the landscape, softening to a thick blood temperature.”

"Already – the delayed appearance of green – is indicative of the sort of jungle Flipo has created in scent. Not one of overwhelming wilderness, nor a tempestuous exchange of intensities, but of polite severity. A jungle that is just enough, with the requisite qualities and quantities of green that demonstrates a sophisticated level of restraint: of one thing less which in turn renders that which remains much more striking.”

“Le Lion has an utterly magical and miraculous opening, which gratifyingly fizzes like a Champagne rush of resinous amber dust and powder. Thank bergamot right at the top, which is shy about nothing whatsoever, flashing its intense bright light, offering a breezy swirl of hot air high up tinged with vanilla”

In this post, I look all at once at my past, the present, and the open future of this engagement, and explain how I see the world of scent, and aesthetics, more generally.

“The rose in this scent signifies abundance and plenty, a sweetly scented burst of florality kept in check by shimmery gossamer-textured incense with facets best described on one hand as gothic and liturgical, but on another as tingly, effervescent, and zesty, generating a tangible feeling of an infinitude of space”