From Reiu on Basenotes
First thoughts:
I’m stunned. Awestruck. Words don’t do this justice, but I must try. My very first thought was, it’s as if Salaam gathered precious flowering plants from an imagined fantasy land and transformed it into liquid, together with the headspace of other imaginary scents that must have been in its daydreamt surroundings. It’s transparent and deeply hypnotic at the same time. Two qualities I don’t think I’ve encountered in a single perfume together.
There is a lot of violet leaf, which I love; the absolute of violet leaf is one of my favorite smells and I chose it as one of the main accord notes. Patchouli shows a character in this I don’t think I’ve ever encountered elsewhere either. In fact, I had difficulty identifying it at first, because it’s nothing like anything else patchouli I’ve smelled. It’s like a clear, delicate tone of watery musk, and was one of the first things I smelled when sprayed. Maybe it’s coming from the other supporting notes, blended with it, so smoothly I can’t tell which I’m smelling at any given time.
The magnolia note is the most enigmatic and mysterious I’ve ever smelled. Especially when “enigmatic” and “mysterious” are not words I normally associate with magnolia. A watery, darker magnolia: not somber, exactly, but it’s serene and calm, beatific. All the more astounding given the naturally cheerful fruity-floral character of the raw material. And clary sage here is, somehow, positively narcotic, heady. Almost as though it could inebriate. (Addendum from later: In fact I think that is true of this whole perfume; the more I wear it, the more I feel like I’m almost getting drunk on it!)
And the whole is, of course, so much more than the sum of the parts, as it always is with this house.
I will be doing a full write up on this here once I’ve spent some time with this: together with the custom process, naming, and the notes list I’ve picked and all. For now, I’m just going to enjoy it. If enjoy is the right word. Maybe appreciate in a dreamy trance is more like it.
Warning: extremely long post of gushing praise and backstory ahead!
Arche
Carrying whiffs from the fragrance, every breeze coming into the room is transformed into something delicate and ethereal. If I were some marketing copy writer who gets to make up a notes pyramid, I’d claim there’s a pure dew water accord, because that’s what I smell framing the fragrance: droplets of pure dew water from mist condensation.
What the notes really are, at least what I had chosen:
Main notes: Magnolia, violet leaves, clary sage
Full list: Magnolia, violet leaves, clary sage, blue chamomile, rose (Bulgarian – EO), sandalwood (Australia santalum album), patchouli
I told Salaam that for the notes, I was inspired by the chrysanthemum flower. In his reply, he said two things: one, that he could tell from the notes I picked that the perfume would smell stupendous (which was prescient!). Two, he warned me that he couldn’t make the perfume smell like a chrysanthemum flower. (He was also kind enough to give his illuminating thoughts on the relationship between a perfumer and his work with a lovely poem by Kahlil Gibran, which resonated with me very much as a writer.)
I said I didn’t mind. What I actually didn’t tell him—mainly because I was too self-conscious!—was that I had mentioned the chrysanthemum was because its scent was the best approximation I had for the “mental headspace” of a short story I wrote privately a few years ago when I was 23.
And the choosing of the notes came from this fantasy headspace: the dripping wet earth of violet leaves and patchouli, herbal clary sage and blue chamomile, dewy and aquatic flowers, an underpinning of sandalwood, the list put together in a way where I hoped each could bridge smoothly into the others. Of course the magic of AbdesSalaam Attar perfumes is that even unexpected notes come together smoothly, but in this case I hoped also for the ingredients to have a kind of tonal harmony (to me). Like how I think about the sound of words when I write my fiction.
Though, I confess really the list mostly came to me in one go and I was confident it was the right one simply because it seemed to me to be so! haha.
Arche refers to an ancient hypothesis about the underlying first principle and essence of all things, a substance from which all things originate and into which all things resolve. The short story behind the inspiration was titled, “The Flowers of Arche”: hence the naming. Narrated by an amnesiac, the story (written privately for myself, shared with some friends and family) was the inspiration for coming up with the notes for Arche, the perfume.
I told myself that whatever the perfume would turn out to be, I would smell it for itself. The inspiration for it was my story, but that that was only a precursor to its creation.
The rest was left at the hands of the perfumer: in the hands of the perfumer, it would become itself. To loosely paraphrase Salaam a bit.
And then—when “Arche” the perfume came back to me, for me, it was indeed itself, defying the imagination: A cool rainy day herbal-green watery floral, full and round and delicate. At the same time, to me it undeniably shared some of the soul of the story. A tranquillity that is not marred from, but rather elevated through melancholy and a hint of wistfulness.
Ethereal blooms of magnolia and a hint of illuminating rose weave through the violet leaves and clary sage, warmed with the herbal sweetness of ever so slightly smoky blue chamomile, grounded by delicate damp patchouli, and a hum of sandalwood through its heart. Long into the dry down, the intertwined muscatel-like fragrance of magnolia and clary sage lingers.
A few days before the package arrived, I couldn’t help asking Salaam what he thought of the perfume. He said I didn’t have long to find out, which was true enough! And then he added, “Stupendous and stunning. This is it.”
And that it is. Even more than I could’ve hoped for. It’s beautiful, sedating (the blue chamomile maybe?), and making me giddy—I think I might be inhaling just a bit too much air from how eagerly I try to sniff it! At the same time, it’s a perfume of being in a place of peace and acceptance.
Scent cannot truly be conveyed through words, nor a picture, but perhaps they can all share in a relatedness of spirit. An concept illustration of the story was drawn for me by a Japanese illustrator featuring the main character (a doodle of whom is also my avatar). I thought I would share it here, because its hues and transparent colors and contrasts between light and dark, recalls to me something of this fragrance.
