The second perfume that a company releases is often the hardest to truly crack, because you’re riding on the success of the first but trying to stretch your creative horizons. Finding the middle ground in the battle between being too safe and too divergent becomes the scented goal. There have been many examples of the follow-up fragrance not hitting the mark, and so hearing that Leonie Sherif was releasing Twilight, her second fragrance, brought feelings of excitement and trepidation in equal measure. This songbird is no stranger to experimenting with musical chords, but would the perfumed ones be just as accommodating?
Whether you’re thinking about music, film, theatre or perfume, there are certain examples in every genre that demand to be referenced as the ultimate interpretation. This can be because they have captured the public’s imagination, maybe won the applause of the critics, but ultimately they stand alone on a pedestal. When it comes to perfume, there is arguably only one ingredient that truly bucks this trend. Oud has been a mainstay of the fragrance market since 2007, but its tenacity has made it challenging for many. It would take fourteen years for its heart to be truly revealed, and that was in Silky Woods from Goldfield & Banks.
Alternative spins on established styles are one way that the perfume industry continues to reinvent itself with each new release. Whether this is a particular fragrance family, a worldwide bestseller, or even a specific ingredient focus, it’s the new presentation of something which has a familiarity that often grabs the attention of customers above a wholly new idea. There are few perfume inspirations that haven’t been done in one way or another other in the past, but the new Artemis from Soki London absolutely lives up to the well-known adage that “if you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise.”
