Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab: Scents Beyond the Pale

A homage to a beloved perfumer : what might one expect of a scent oil company whose logo is an uncanny combination of the tarot's Three of Swords and the Sacred Heart, whose professional profile describes her as "perfumer, smut peddler and moirologist"?  You would not be wrong if you guessed a pandora's box of over 600 scents of strange and delirium inducing properties, each a conjuring, myth, or a vision, even. In fact Elizabeth Barrial, the head nose in question, tells the story here of a complaint about the phantomy Veil, "A quiet scent, soft, calm and enigmatic. A perfume of mystery, of whispers, and of secrets behind secrets. White sandalwood, lilac, gardenia, violet, orris, lavender and ylang ylang," which may seem, if not innocuous, at least a gentle touch only from beyond a nostalgic grave. It would, however, trigger nightmares for a certain wearer every time she put it on.

Haunting indeed, these creations of alchemical genius oscillate between the literary the naughty, or both at once.

One might choose the Dolcestilnoviste La Bella Donna della Mia Mente ("the beautiful lady of my mind") or the Keatsian Ode on Melancholy, ("Beauty, joy, pleasure and delight: devastated. This is the scent of the hopelessness, torment and despair of love. Lavender and wisteria, heart-wrenching pale rose, desolate white sandalwood and thin, tear-streaked white musk.") or the Preraphaelite Lady of Shallot("The scent of calm waters just before a raging storm, limned with achingly-beautiful blooms, an icy scent, but somehow warm, and mirror-bright: bold gardenia, crystalline musk, muguet, water blossoms, clear, slightly tart aquatic notes and a crush of white ginger."); The curious and the addicted will find for instance a whole line devoted to Alice's adventures in Wonderland (The White Rabbit "Strong black tea and milk with white pepper, ginger, honey and vanilla, spilled over the crisp scent of clean linen", for instance) or through the looking glass (The Red Queen "Deep mahogany and rich, velvety woods lacquered with sweet, black-red cherries and currant" being but one example), or even Lovecraft (Miskatonic University promises "The scent of Irish coffee, dusty tomes and polished oakwood halls." but also Edo era woodcut porn (Famous Kabuki Actors in Imagined Scenes of Lovemaking "Goat’s milk, honey dust, vanilla husk, oak bark, cardamom pod, tobacco leaf, cedarwood, and vetiver.") and other choice bits of polisson such as Bordello ("A decadent, deep perfume, lusty and luxuriant. The scent evokes images of velvet-lined Old West cathouses, tightly laced corsets, rustling petticoats and coquettish snarls of pleasure. Bawdy plum with amaretto, burgundy wine and black currant.").

That each is also an invitation down the primrose path of purple prose is evidenced in a handful of reviews I wrote for some of my favorites. Each is a closet drama, or a poem playing out, unfolding like a sonnet.

Marie

"A blend of sinuous violet and elegant tea rose: the chosen scent of France’s Demigoddess of Debauch: Marie Antoinette."

In the vial: so sweet, demure even – I don’t get the debauchery at all. If this is the namesake at all, this is innocent Antoinette the dauphine exchanged at the border before Versailles affected her. So much for the character- for the scent itself, it’s as though rose and violet grew upon the same vine, one twining round the other, again very, very sweet, in both senses

On me, wet: that same sweetness and intertwining rose and violet that seems to form its own scent, more than the sum of its parts

On me, just dried: an old scent, but not an old lady scent as it’s too young, just a perfume from another era. I don’t get Marie Antoinette out of it (- would need orange blossom for me for that), for me it would be more Gigi as she is learning without realizing it how to be a demi-mondaine, though perhaps too shy, still, for Gigi.

After 15 minutes: the florals begin to come into their own, individualize as they grow up a bit, becoming more sensual, now violet, now rose, by turns, telling a tale of time gone by, of something graceful and slow, douceur de vivre

After 30 minutes: no real difference from the last phase, still that tantalizing twin talk of the violet and the rose.

After 1 hour: It doesn’t really morph, I find, on me at least. But it’s just as lovely as when I put it on. I am infatuated.

After 3 hours: for a dainty thing she holds on, for a shy thing she makes herself heard, though fading into something faintly powdery It has been called by other BPAListas an “old lady perfume” but, as far as I’m concerned, this is applicable only in the sense of that Parisian apartment found locked for seventy years that had belonged to a courtesan, and even that something she wore when she was much younger.

Fleurs du Mal

"The scents of the blossoms of darkness, condensed into one perfume. Features a rose base, softened with lilac and wisteria."

In the vial: heady headstrong, headspinning – rose dominant and something else powdery (if you like that kind of thing, which I do) – I could follow Baudelaire’s order to be drunk on this

On me, wet: a darker, lower note, I don’t know what, comes to anchor the heady Rose and her floral accomplices: this is the Mal, then, after the original bouquet drew you in and seduced you. It’s in your flesh now, and there’s no escaping it. I understand now that this is in Ars Moriendi

On me, just dried: what has entered your flesh is now part of your soul, and it is not a shy thing (no powder now), it will make you its own. Rose, yes, but a rose close to the earth, a rose close to rotting, though still deeply sensual. The other flowers are there, I can sense them but they don’t announce themselves, are content to bear witness to the Rose’s sins.

After 15 minutes: The powder is back but cannot absolve the Rose. Still, she bears her head proudly, Wisteria and Lilac whisper consolations, but behind her back

After 30 minutes: Wisteria and Lilac come forth to defend the Rose; they speak but their words revolve around her, echo her deeds.

After 1 hour: Powder now, a rosy powder: the rose herself has absconded leaving only her memory, but what a memory, all the low notes underneath the powder

After 3 hours: The legend of the Rose and her deeds will be spoken of by Wisteria and Lilac’s descendants, echoing dowsn through many generations

Jasmine cottage

Inspired by Good Omens: 

" 'She’d rented the cottage furnished, which meant that the actual furniture was the special sort you find in these circumstances and had probably been left out for the dustmen by the local War on Want shop. It didn’t matter. She didn’t expect to be here long.

If Agnes was right, she wouldn’t be anywhere long. Nor would anyone else.'

Camellia, jasmine, heather, orange blossom, osmanthus, wisteria, thyme, angelica, freesia, granny’s nightcap, and English wildflowers."

In the vial: “Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour - as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts.” ― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell

You open the lid, as a shutter from your cottage window onto the overrun garden on a morning in mid spring, after it rained all yesterday – the air is still chill, but so fresh and beginning to warm in the sun that is enough to bring out the scent of buds of the various flowers peeking shyly out, but it is a birdsong choir of green scent in which no voice of them rises above the rest to take a starring role. Instead it is a perfect blend of vernal blooms that can hardly contain their joy that that snows are good and over.

On me, wet: less of the sunshine and damp greenery and the flowers blooming further open, maybe some of those flowers asserting themselves, not boldly no, but just enough that a better nose than mine might identify them.- the freesia I think?

On me, just dried: blossoming, the petals open and exhale, cool freesia, gentle jasmine, heather perhaps? and general wildflowers that band together to remain anonymous

After 15 minutes: sweet sap rising

After 30 minutes: Flowers all bloomed, “as we roamed and loved in the bowers, in the fields and the meadows where we strayed”

After 1 hour: fast withering, like the best of us, it dies young.

After 3 hours: Did I just dream all this? Was it ever there? Was I ever there? “"was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?”

Verdict: though it doesn’t have much, if any, staying power on my skin, this vial is always always amongst those I buy every time, knowing its pleasures are brief, they are nonetheless so exquisite. I cannot do without them.

The Raven

"Sleek, dark, and ominous. Violet and neroli mingled with iris, white sandalwood and dark musk."

In the vial: all the violets, but blooming at midnight. Dark-winged, somber, a raven feather with violet highlights bouncing off of it.

On me, wet: those somber violets overwhelmingly, but in serious discussion with the sandalwood and musk

On me, just dried: the sandalwood comes to the fore but remembers every word the violets said, echo of musk, or a candle just snuffed out

After 15 minutes: the return of the violets, still with the snuffed candle-musk, this counterpoint of a floral with something darker and smokier

After 30 minutes: still the intertwining of violets and musk –

After 1 hour: The violets make their presence felt above musk and sandalwood, but the latter still remain

After 3 hours: violets tempered by the dark, complicated grief of sandalwood, violets in mourning musk. As hypnotic as an Anish Kapoor black, draws you in and absorbs you with all light. A long poem ensues of love lost to death, haunting the skin of one living for nearly evermore


Nocturne

"An olfactory serenade. A somber, contemplative scent — dreamy and subdued. Deepest violet touched with lilac and tuberose."

In the vial: Sister scent to the Raven, but Odile to her Odette. Violets but while somewhat melancholical not as somber, the tuberose lifts it up out of its grief and gives it hope in the dusk

On me, wet: lilac steps forth to say she’s there, to count her with the violets and tuberose, three sisters, as is the opening of so many novels and this sets the scene as twilight settles in

On me, just dried: Still the three sisters sit in their parlor and exchange somewhat gnomic interlocking pleasantries, as though rhyming together, as the dusk grows bluer

After 15 minutes: Tuberose brings up a point and leads the discussion, but Violet responds. Lilac is reduced to the occasional ‘mm-hmm’ ‘mm-mmm’

After 30 minutes: low chatter amongst the three of them, no voice rises above the others and I cannot make out what they are saying precisely as no one is speaking over the other

After 1 hour: conversation fades to a murmur

After 3 hours: comfortable silence and echoes as we retire to bed, exhausted.


The Rose

"The promise of a rose: red rose petals, fresh sap, and the sharp green scent of stem and leaf".

In the vial: the sap of the broken green stem and the reddest of luscious roses are one heady entity that makes the head spin with what you’ve done, (stolen roses are sweetest)- but how can you regret anything so beautiful?

On me, wet: Running away from the forbidden rose bush, the greensap fades more to the flower nw: if this is the stolen rose from the Beast’s garden, the scent on my wrist is proof of my guilt, even if it was an act of love for another- there is no disguising it, it will give me away. The Beast caught up with me purely by following its trail, so strong is the throw.

On me, just dried: So Red the Rose – pure, pure absolute of Rose abducted from an enchanted garden where I had no right to go, to be, to pluck

After 15 minutes: the rose -still absolute- has softened somewhat, not so sharp, the stemsap is still there as a highlighting contrast as green does to red

After 30 minutes: the rose is still calming down, and calming me down too – the green stemsap has largely faded, the rose having been stolen half an hour back

After 1 hour: the rose too has fled, escaped, a ghost rose left on my wrist, haunting me

After 3 hours: not even a phantom rose anymore

Scherezade

"A master storyteller who possessed unfailing courage and compassion, a sharp, quick wit, and a true understanding of human nature. Saffron and Middle Eastern spices swirled through sensual red musk."

In the vial: sensual musk of a smokey red feel, incense in the chamber of the Sultan. The scene is set.

On me, wet: The story proper begins: sultry, sulfurous (not the smell of sulfur, just the heat of it) the red hot coals upon which a resin burns and desire too-

On me, just dried: is the cinnamon? I am reminded of red hot cinnamon hearts I delighted in as a child, if such could be translated into the rarefied atmosphere I feel with this scent, that climbs sinuous white smoke from a stick of of incense. This is a very sexy number, this one.

After 15 minutes: The cinnamon fades but the story teller draws you in just like the burning resin that smoulders in the incense holder – all musk now floating in waves, you cannot resist.

After 30 minutes: what happens next you wonder? The plot thickens as the cinnamon resurrects from its recent past, twisting &and turning from musk to incense and back again(and omg is that just a strand of vanilla now?), ever-shifting as though under a dinn’s spell

After 1 hour: a djinn’s kiss, still smouldering on

After 3 hours: djinn breath, faint but still hot.