Verdigris Cathedrals: ‘Norne’ & Slumberhouse.

For Douglas Brown... a Portland guy, who's been waiting for me to write this for ages.... Ax. 

I’m still recovering from the shock of Norne. The dirty green stickiness of it on my wrist, the oils settling like a second skin a pungent, visceral gasp of medicinal fog, dawn bark, mulch and a damp bone-touching thrill of poisoned weather. There is an imagining of vaulted green ceilings, moss-covered and ancient, canopies whispering in the dark. In dreams I wear a crown of woven verdigris branches and leaves. All around me is the smell of crushed needles rising from the forest floor like the bitterest smoke. 

Did that grab you? I hope so. I am very taken with Slumberhouse, a small artisan scent house based in Portland, Oregon. I hesitate to call it perfume because I’m not sure it is. Scent design, odiferous abstraction, olfactory drama? The notes create an emotive exploration across skin and senses. There is a feral realism to the scents, constructed with an Impressionist’s eye for effect and detail. When I first smelt them I found it quite hard to imagine who these astonishing creations were aimed at, so personal were the effects.

Slumberhouse was founded by Josh Lobb and a small group of friends operating as a kind of creative collective. Slumberhouse is now just Josh with the others going their separate ways over time.  Self-taught and obsessive about every detail of his creations, Josh has assembled one of the most enigmatic and forceful collections of scents I have touched to skin in quite some time. His dislike of top notes and singular pursuit of turbulent darkness really strikes a chord. There is beautiful night and decay in the notes, the smell of fallen stones, lichen-covered trees sinking silently into haunted expanses of forests. Shadows flicker with lost souls and spirits call out in the spaces between notes. I smell magic.  Not the elven cringe of Lord of the Rings, but the creeping rise of forest paganism, the sweeping forces portrayed in Princes Mononoke. This may sound a little OTT, but when you first start nosing Slumberhouse fragrances, the impact on the senses is pretty damn forceful.   

I sampled Norne, Jeke, Sova, Ore and Pear & Olive.  The line has been cut over the last year or so due to cost of materials and the rising cost of shipping. Josh has retained a core line of gripping aromas and while some diehard fans have griped about the cost rise and the loss of Vikt, Mur, Rune, Grev and Verg etc; as a hinterland perfumer most people admire the purifying of his processes.

I like the remaining core collection, for me it highlights all that is weird and compulsive chez Slumberhouse – dankness, irregularity, angst, a sense of saga and most of all a tremendous sense of beauty found in dank and murk. There is a signature: smoke…. a sweet chewed tobacco glow that rolls through the range, lending the fragrances a sense of sacrifice, fumes offered up to the skies from willing skin. An echo of the very beginnings of scent and perfume, per fumum.. through smoke.  Even the malleable cocoa glitter of Ore has a passing whiff of jazz age cigarette.

Josh played with synthetics and essential oils in his early creations, searching for a means of olfactive expression to suit his eclectic and curious nature. In several interviews he has mentioned not wearing scent when he was younger. I think in many ways this was a big advantage when it came to re-creating favoured odours and influences the Josh Lobb way. Unencumbered by formal training or the expectations of what he should be achieving and indeed producing, the hard-learned alchemical experimentation has allowed Slumberhouse to grow in secret like a culture in a cracked petri-dish in a forgotten lab. Until suddenly someone says, ‘Damn, this stuff works, it smells like Norwegian Death metal played in darkness under a canopy of shuddering pines’.

Ravishing Jasmine/Indulgent Chai – ‘Untitled #1 & #2’ by Magnetic Scent

I started writing this, propped up in bed, lights dimmed, early autumnal rain morse-coding against my pitifully thin Edinburgh windows. I was warm though, under layers of comforters and a tartan blanket. There was silence, the air radiant with a halo of efflorescent jasmine hum filling the room. If it had a noise it would be crackling softly like the mutter of embers. There is that odour I always get with jasmine of rubbered plasticity, freshly cleaned fridges, and plugs. I love the naughtiness of indoles blurring a murky line between decay and desire. The raw power of jasmine has a compelling sullied undertone, a fragile odour of defilement. This disturbing attraction lies just below the dazzling surfaces of floral luminosity.

I was wearing Untitled#1 by Magnetic Scent, an artisan fragrance house based in Amsterdam. Three fragrances – Untitled#2, Tindrer and Indigo were launched in 2012. Untitled#1 was launched earlier this year. It is one of the most dramatic lung-filling jasmines I have ever put on skin. It has taken Spyros Drosopolous, the nose and artistic visionary behind Magnetic Scent over 300 mods to get his portrait of jasmine just the way he wants it. It is 50% jasmine, with a high dose of real absolutes and the rest painstakingly created from other floral and aromachemical sources. The effect is simply outstanding. The two sides of the jasmine face each like white armoured queens looking deep into mirrors, each knowing the other is there and somehow understanding the tensions held in opposite indolic worlds. For there is an unease between the real and imagined jasmines and this is needed, the slight shuddering and friction creates fire and the perfume ignites across the skin like dawn racing across needy land.

I wasn’t sure at all, smelling Untitled#1 for the first time. And I love my floral odours: roses, lilies, tuberose, jasmine and orange blossom. The counterpointing of purity and decay, indoles and sap, white creamy beauty and the slow decent into bruised collapse. I love the embedded benzyl salicylates and the skin-sullying joy of wearing huge white florals. The problem is always one of quality. Stinting on the quality of the jasmine absolutes or the technologies used to enhance and wrap the core themes and the perfume will cause the juice to collapse in on itself, smelling cheap and starchy, the promised fleshiness fading like so much mist.

Let the Stone Weep Around Me: ‘Violette Fumée’ by Mona Di Orio

The 19^th of July was Mona di Orio’s birthday and bloggers and writers across the electronic ether again reminded us that the perfumed world is a far less interesting place since Mona’s premature death at the end of 2011.

I am the same age and feel the loss oddly. Sitting here in my sun-flooded Edinburgh kitchen, I simply cannot imagine not being here, doing this, creating, writing and I have nowhere near the talent and artistic power that flowed from Mona. The more I wear her creations, the more I realise how close to genius she was in her instinctual understanding of olfactive chiaroscuro.

Her perfumes oscillate between light and dark, illuminating the shadows but at the same time masking and veiling, keeping certain things hidden from us. This tilting of the light away from the face or main theme, of allowing us to see the edges and hinterlands of compositions; this is her legacy. No one understood the nuances of light and shade like Mona, you can smell the tonal shifts, feel the luminescence on your skin and the bruises of night. There are times when we all need drama, majesty and true luxury in our fragrances. This is when we turn to Mona de Orio.

I worry it is early to say this, and you must forgive any offence, but her premature death has also I think deepened an already very powerful sense of connection to Mona’s work. There is an aura of ownership and enhanced familiarity. The people around the world who have worn her scents feel her absence keenly and draw her creations around themselves like protective charms. I am aware of her loss each time I wear one of her beautiful creations. I am sure she would have been troubled by this sense of melancholia as her work was a celebration of life and nature it all its glory. But we sense what we sense. The poems of Plath, Lowell and Brooke, the films of Monroe, Dean and Jean Vigo, the music of Buckley and Morrison, the art of Basquiat and Schiele, the lives of Princesses Diana and Grace – we imbue these with a different colour of memory. Tragedy bestows nostalgia and absence reinforcing our connections to those that have gone before their time.

It is always bittersweet. At the peak or on the cusp of artistic or creative greatness, we can never really know how much was to come, how much glory was to follow. In the case of Mona, a parfumeuse operating at the peak of her powers, the loss is incomparable. Only those closest to her know what she was preparing to do. Jeroen Oude Sogtoen was left not only with the painful task of coping with the loss of a beloved friend and business partner but also the looming issue of continuance. How to carry on with the perfumed work with Mona gone? However he has managed very successfully to keep Mona’s memory alive while at the same time necessitating movement forward. Transition is painful and forces introspection and change, but it is necessary in order to survive.

Delirious Velveteen Rhubarb: ‘Miss Dior Le Parfum’ by Dior

Popcorn dusted in shattered fraise de bois…with a powdery crunch of pavlova. An amber note trailing like peach coloured sun across an evening floor. Roses drifting across honeyed skin. And then a hint of something more louche and trashy - the drift of rolling tobacco in a summer night street; patchouli rolling in bed with vanilla, laughing at the evening stars. These are memories I have of Miss Dior Cherie a twisted sugar-bomb wonder that Dior dropped into the market in 2005.

Now we have Miss Dior Le Parfum. Rhubarb and custard candies… pink and beige. Echoes of the original messed –up shattered wonder but with added grown-up knowingness. And I’m in love again. This is just a delirious, velveteen scent, plush and so indulgent. I go through phases of constantly spraying it over my skin, inhaling and sighing. It’s a sighing kind of scent. Generally, it’s private juice, for that just me time. Dimmed lights, a good book, some writing, rose-streaked night sky just starting to chill down. Silence and the cats roaming the rooms like bored naughty panthers.

I’m kinda late to this I guess. I wore the original Nagel scent and adored the riff on Parisian chic meets bubblegum trash aesthetic. The original was the perfumed personification of that gorgeous French teen girl you see on a bus or metro and think, does she just roll out bed like that? Tough and soft pieces of Lou Doillon, Ludovine Sagnier and Clemence Poesy thrown together with arrogance and youthful ease. Then she blows a fuck-off bubble, cracks up and gives you the finger. That was Miss Dior Cherie. Sweet sexy vulgarity that made you feel alive.

Sweet & Floured Skin: ‘Castaña’ by Cloon Keen Atelier

Castaña is Spanish for chestnut, a familiar nut with a singular smeared and floury taste. Sweet or savoury, chestnuts are very distinctive; an acquired taste like asparagus, anything caprine and pomegranates. I love them candied, cooked with game, ground, distilled, fried or simply roasted in their shiny shells. They smell of the earth, chthonic. Despite growing on trees, they seem more correct on the ground amid leaf litter and the colours of autumn.

I have a very specific memory of roasted chestnuts linked to a miserable night in Paris as a student in the early 90s. I was an early manny and as such, part of a vast network of often unpaid naïve student slave labour, expected to appreciate the glamour of the city and the experiences being somewhat grudgingly extended to us and yet work ridiculous and demanding hours.  

My friend C and I didn’t go home that Christmas and the guy I’d been seeing brushed me off like snow on his shoulder. We lived off Boursin, horribly cheap wine in plastic bottles, baguette and C’s miraculous garlic-laden macaroni cheese she managed to conjure up on a hot plate in her little room. God knows where our money went. We look amazing in the photos, so on clothes, booze and cigarettes I guess.

One evening we were in the Marais, after a few hours of pastis on a chilled terrace, wandering the Place des Vosges, one of our favourite places, vibrant by day, shadowed and eerie at night. It was drizzling and the streets were mobbed with shoppers, bags crashing into us as we moaned to each other, over-dramatising as only petulant, slightly pissed English students could. I was never dressed properly for any weather, thin t-shirts, ripped jeans and a cricket sweater that had seen better days. More rent than tourist. I’m sure it was all horribly deliberate. The photos demonstrate a smug knowingness I hardly recognise now. I always had a fag in my hand no matter what the weather.

Everywhere we wandered, peering in at windows and dodging manic cars and raging klaxons, we could smell roasted chestnuts. It’s a very distinctive smell, unlike anything else, soft and inviting, wrapped in milky smoke. The little Dickensian stands emitted its heat and glow into the saturated evening. I wanted some, badly. The smell made my stomach howl. The marchand des chataignes was from Marseilles, his singsong accent, blurring his vowels like Mireille Matthieu. I remember begging him for two bags as I only had enough for one. Whatever I said worked, he waved his black-smutted hands at me and muttered joyeux noel…smiling through the rain. I shouted joyeux noel back and ran to find C, who was standing in a doorway, angrily trying to light a crooked damp cigarette.

The smell of those sweet hot chestnuts, split and crisp, reeking of the newspaper cones the seller had made himself has stayed with me forever. Ink and floured nuttiness, sugared starch, but most of all, a scent of streets, of lights and rain, traffic fumes and exhaustion. I am very wary about eating roast chestnuts now. I see the vendors, smell the whiff of cracking burnt shell, the ooze of sweet inside. But I’m not sure I want to actually rekindle that particular memory. We walked for miles as we always did, Rue de Rivoli, Louvre, Chatelet, Gare de Lyon, Bastille, back to our rooms. In the morning I remember my fingers smelled of fire and sugar, the smudged newspaper tossed across the floor near my crumpled Gitanes.

I have cooked with chestnuts since, stuffed partridge with them, pan-fried them with sprouts, maple syrup and walnuts, made a sauce with them, mixed with prunes and Armagnac and poured it over venison. And I’m anyone’s pretty much for a quality marron glacé… If you told me I had a rare disorder which meant I had to spend the end of my days living off marrons glacés and honeydew melon, I would be a very happy Fox.       

However as a fragrance note is rare enough to stand out. Strange really, because it is a very distinctive note, warm and sugared, floury and woody-soft. They taste like they look. Snug and golden. There are hints of saffron, patisserie, spiced apple, sweet potato and artichoke. The texture is glutinous and dry, powdered and strangely sherbety. There are a few rather unusual perfumes that have taken chestnuts as a theme and done lovely things with them. Betrand Duchaufour has been creating perfumes for the Sersale Family at the Hotel Sirenuse on the Amalfi coast for a number of years now. I am huge fan of his hot, terracotta-infused Paestum Rose. But his melancholic and comforting Sienne L’Hiver is layered with notes of the earth: truffles, leaves, straw, coal roasted chestnuts, violet, woods and musks. The elements of wandering through forests, of trying to lose oneself, kicking at the ground, all around the odours of autumn descend and infiltrate the senses.

The other one is Aqua di Casta by Testa Maura, created by Corsican perfumer Xavier Torre. These are really beautiful intense fragrances, made with true passion and desire. Carticasi is another one, a profoundly resinous floral with ylang and rose but tempered with the weird brittle snap of mastic. Wonderful. Aqua di Casta is a homage to the chestnut trees of the Castagniccia Corsican highlands. Blended with pepper, wood and ginger it is a dry sun-swept scent, filled with the rustle of leaves and sound of coruscating summer winds.