Aether Arts Perfumes Charybdis (Amber Jobin) 2018 + Birds and Ships Draw

Stock photo apped by Amber

Boulder-based  Art and Olfaction Winner 2014, perfumer Amber Jobin was born in Florida close to the ocean; she spent her earliest years there. The wild briny seas constitute beloved primal olfactory memories.

1838 Théodore Chasseriau – Venus Anadyomene.

A woman may live in the mountains and still crave the sea, the source of life – tempestuous, moody, mutable – that saline existential broth from whence we once arose like Venus Anadyomene. Amber Jobin sought a true marine scent for years without satisfaction: too floral, too tropical fruity, too sanitized. While I am emphatically NOT an ozonic fan, I’m happy to switch camps for her latest composition, Aether Arts Perfumes Charybdis. The perfumer has achieved that which is evoked by 90% synthetics, no true animalics, and only 10% naturals, presented as perfume-strength oil: the iconic windswept ocean. Personally, I feel it’s a real coup.

As a New Englander, a Bostonian for 45 years – I can say that our circumstances are somewhat reversed. I’m a sylvan mountain creature who has spent most of my life by the sea. I adore the power and majesty of changeable skies and white-capped waves, the smell and infinite hues of grey-blue-green in constant flux, their irrational beauty. I dream of creating sculpture from detritus left in the waves’ wake: shells, driftwood, discarded carapaces and other effluvia one unearths at low tide.

Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis, Johann Heinrich Füssli 1795

Charybdis! Odyssean images flood the consciousness. Caught up in aiding her father Poseidon as he feuded with his brother Zeus, she was chained to the seabed and transformed into a hideous monster with flippers who possessed an unquenchable thirst for the sea. Charybdis downed the ocean waters thrice daily to slake this thirst, creating whirlpools in the process. What a turbulent association for a fragrance…Aether ArtsPerfumes Charybdis feels truly, madly, deeply marine: the driftwood note is poignant and salty, photorealistic.

Aether Arts Perfumes Charybdis is accompanied by a faintly iodine tone of seaweed, umame in nature and fully actualized. I’m fairly certain that my dreaded enemy Calone (or a close relative) is present, but it’s so beautifully portrayed that it doesn’t devour the perfume as a whole (which would ruin it for me). There exists a balance between briny and woody, the woodiness perhaps bearing tiny barnacles and smelling slightly singed at the edges. It is as if I’m atop a widow’s walk too close to the sea on lookout for my distant lover: wind-whipped, bathed in errant salt spray. It reminds me of Woody Guthrie’s poem set to music by Billy Bragg of Wilco on their Mermaid Avenue album (sung dulcetly and melancholically by Natalie Merchant), Birds and Ships:

Natalie Merchant Birds and Ships apped by MC

“The birds are singing in your eyes today 

Sweet flowers blossom in your smile
The wind and sun are in the words you say
Where might your lonesome lover be?

Birds maybe singing in my eyes today
Sweet flowers blossom when I smile
But my soul is stormy and my heart blows wild
My sweetheart rides a ship on the sea.”

Aether Arts Perfumes Charybdis Scent of the Sea
Aether Arts Perfumes Charybdis is a highly personal perfume and a comforting one in its singular fashion. I find it soulful, an aromatic communion with natural forces beyond our control or ken. It lies intimately close to the flesh.If Amber has managed to ensnare me into a genre which I bear little love, I suspect you might enjoy sampling it as well.  Notes: ozone, salt spray, seaweed, driftwood.

Sample kindly provided by Amber. My nose is my own…

~ Ida Meister, Senior Editor

~ Art Direction, Michelyn Camen, Editor-in-Chief

Thanks to the generosity of Amber Jobin, we are offering a 5ml  draw of Aether Arts Perfumes Charybdis to one registered reader worldwide (be sure to register or your comment will not be counted). To be eligible, tell us what appeals to you about Aether Arts Charybdis based on Ida's review, your memory of a moment by the sea or a song that reminds you of the sea. Draw closes 1/29/2018

We announce the winners only on site and on our Facebook page, so Like ÇaFleureBon and use our RSS blog feed…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


11 comments

  • James Sherwood says:

    I love the sea. I would wear this to bed and cream of the ocean. The song I choose is Brandy by Looking Glass. Jim in Md.

  • Zibbyz says:

    Ooh, on Etsy, another nose I just found out about. I love the beach and the see, and now living in Seattle, I get to visit the beach whenever my family and I can find time. Woody always sounds nice to me, add the briny and it would be something different from my collection. or seaweed and driftwood, always a nostalgic scent of walks along the beach, searching for shells and pretty stones. thank you for the draw!

  • Tom Schroeder says:

    I think that only Ida would describe herself as a “sylvan mountain creature”, speak of “discarded carapaces and other effluvia”, and describe a driftwood note as “poignant and salty, photorealistic”. She takes me on an olifactory experience described with unprecedented characterizations every time. I like Ida’s oceanic descriptions of this fragrance, they just make me smile.

    I used to live several houses away from the beach in California, and can remember living with the oceanic air all the time, especially when it was windy and the waves churned and boomed in the distance, with salt and seaweed and marine accord everywhere. Autos parked outside would be dusted with a patina of dried saltwater in the morning. Love the review, and look forward to trying Charybdis someday. –California, USA

  • peppermoon says:

    Hmm I agree with the perfumer’s pickiness about ocean scents – too floral, too much calone, etc. I haven’t found one that works for me yet. If she was able to accomplish that, bravo!
    Not exactly a happy memory, but I was once swept out to sea by a riptide as a child – a very hairy lifeguard luckily saw me and dragged me back. I have a strong scent memory of being squished against this guy’s hairy arm and being dragged, sputtering, out of the salty ocean! So maybe an oceanic animalic would work for me. I still love the ocean though haha.

  • Malka Gittel bas Reuven says:

    I love the sea, and like Ida am always disappointed that sea-concept fragrances veer to everything but the sea. I’m delighted to have Ida tell me I needn’t fear the calone here, because I share her dread of it that’s caused me to give away more than one scent immediately after smelling the c-word. She’s got me curious about this one and I need to know.

  • NiceVULady says:

    Ida’s review is a cautionary tale of perfumes purportedly smelling like the sea, but not. Apparently this perfume really does smell like the sea. I live near the ocean and find my best memories to be of family outings to the beach. Thanks for the draw. I’m in the USA

  • esz says:

    I have not found the perfect ocean scent yet either – so getting my nose on this would be interesting to see where it goes. The notes aren’t complicated by the looks.

    Would love to win! I am in Melbourne Australia

  • Diana D says:

    I grew up near the Jersey shore and my favorite memory of the sea was the summer I turned 21. I spent the entire summer in Belmar and was on the beach nearly every weekend.
    This fragrance sounds so beautiful!
    I’m in the U.S.

  • sunnlitt says:

    I love the quote “a balance between briny and wood”. That is a lovely phrase.
    I, too, have not found a scent of the ocean that works for me.

    I have lived near the ocean in Northern California for most of my life. But, my best ocean memories of the water are of Balboa Bay in Newport Beach, California. When I was a kid my dad would swim forever, doing a slow slow breaststroke. And, I would paddle along beside him. On my raft, soaking in the sun.

    Thanks for the memories, and the drawing.

  • Mim says:

    I don’t even want this scent as I really really don’t like the type, just wanted to say that this is a beautifully written piece with beautiful art, thank you! And for anyone even a little open to oceanic fragrances, Charybdis sounds amazing.

  • Sleepylizard says:

    I grew up by the sea, spent my childhood and teens at the beach…wagged school to be at the beach, learnt to drive on bush tracks and the beach. I still live by the sea and it’s still a place of comfort and joy for me. Thank you.
    Australia