Scent has always been great at conjuring up memories and emotions, and it’s one of the reasons that certain perfumes will resonate so deeply with us as individuals. We all have our own favourite aromas that remind us of special times and, when you find these within a fragrance, it’s often what cements your love affair with that particular perfume. Scents that are evocative of a place are always slightly harder to capture, because it’s so personal, but Keshen Teo has managed it perfectly with the release of his latest fragrance, Ocean Commotion. An early hint of summer fun, it’s time to dive into the water.
When companies launch with a strong début collection it’s always interesting to see what direction future releases will take. Many brands stay firmly within their established style but others take the opportunity to experiment. Certain fragrances can quickly attract a loyal following and so you risk dividing your audience if you steer too closely to a favourite. This is the situation that Prosody London found themselves in after launching their original series of six perfumes. From Neroli Nuance through to Oud Octavo, the fragrances spanned refreshing to resinous but the new Lantern Reed sits apart with its evocative night-time warmth.
When we think about niche fragrance companies, or artisan if you prefer, we often conjure up images of perfumers hunched over a cluttered wooden desk with a single incandescent bulb burning dimly in the corner. It’s the world that Patrick Süskind described in his book, and later the film, Perfume. Now, things have thankfully moved on a lot since then but the important point about artisan perfumers is that they can work anywhere in the world. It’s this opening up of the industry that has resulted in some terrific new companies emerging, and one such example is the Canadian based Ivy’s Poison.
With the summer weather now starting to tease us with its sunshine warmth, it’s natural that our thoughts should turn to fragrances that have a more zesty edge to them. Our instinct is to reach for those gloriously mouthwatering citrus scents that accentuate the radiant heat or even the cooling aromatic ones if you long for a little respite from the constant humidity. Unfortunately, it’s pretty rare to find a perfume that truly offers a combination of the two, whilst also providing a depth of scent that can carry you well into the balmy evenings. However, that is until you try the devilishly sensual Neroli Nuance by Prosody London.
As many readers will already know, I’ve always found the “natural perfumery” side of the fragrance industry fascinating because the challenges that are experienced are not for the faint hearted. Synthetic ingredients are great at providing multifaceted layers and so the natural perfumer needs to be creative and knowledgeable in order to make their finished fragrance truly rounded. This can certainly be said of Oud Octavo by Prosody London. Created by Keshen Teo, it takes the star ingredient but presents it in a wonderfully accessible way that is missing from many of the other oud fragrances on the market.
I don't usually do follow ups to articles that I write because I like them to stand on their own merits, and I've always been pretty good at not flying off the handle and committing an opinion to the internet without fact checking and researching it first. It's for this reason that I was really disappointed with something that I read on Facebook this week. It concerned 100% natural perfumes and the gist of what the person said was that "all natural perfumes smell like mud". There's nothing like a sweeping generalisation to get yourself noticed, maybe that was the person's intention, but let's get a few things clear.
The New York Times described her as "The World’s Most Dedicated All-Natural Perfumer" and she has certainly inspired a generation of independent brands, both independent and commercial. Based in Berkeley, California, Mandy Aftel still creates and blends by hand using a stunning collection of ingredients which have been amassed over her thirty year career. On her recent visit to Britain I asked her "Stephan's Six" so we could learn a little more about the creator of Aftelier Perfumes.
You might not have heard of Marina Barcenilla, but you've probably heard of her award winning perfume, India, which won Best Independent Fragrance at last week’s Fragrance Foundation Awards. Born in Spain, her desire was to try and create a perfume range grounded solely in traditionally extracted ingredients. Would her perfume memories for "Stephan's Six" include any surprise synthetics?
