© Ken Cheung  pexels

The end of a July 4th backyard barbecue, spent firecrackers and a charcoal grill in need of scraping. That’s what the moon smelled like. That’s what Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong smelled from the Moon’s dust in the air when they took off their helmets back in the capsule after their walk. Perfumers’ fantasies of outer space have me looking up at the night sky, not the glowing moonlight young lovers gaze at, but the infinite expanse of the cosmos and its heavenly bodies.

(clockwise from left) © Marc-Antoine Barrois, NASA, Adobe, Wikicommons

Ganymede from Marc–Antoine Barrois is named for the largest moon of planet Jupiter. Four hundred years after Galileo discovered that moon, Quentin Bisch discovered a way for me to love violet, by tucking it into a dusty immortelle. M. Barrois sprayed it on my wrist and I was instantly stunned by its beauty. It was dusty and other-worldly and my immediate impression that evening was that of a dry breeze blowing through fine leather netting woven in a vision of outer space.

(clockwise from left) © Etat Libre d’Orange, Abe’s Books, Wikicommons

Etat Libre D’Orange Spice Must Flow composed by perfumer Mathilde Bijaoui is  not necessarily inspired by actual astronomy, although 2019 was the 50th anniversary of Armstrong and Aldrin’s smoky moon landing. At the same time Frank Herbert was in the midst of writing his classic science fiction Dune Series. The spice which must flow to sustain fragile human life is a priceless commodity found only on the desert planet Arrakis. Similarly, a melange (also the name of Arakkis’ treasure) of rose and spices is arguably equally as necessary for life here on Earth. Perfumery wouldn’t be the same if traders had never traversed “the silk road”, bringing spices, resins and oils into Europe thousands of years ago, Spice Must Flow is absolutely addictive thanks to those ancient beauties.

(clockwise from left) Wikicommons (2), My Perfume Fetish when outer space smelled like aldehydes

The heavens have inspired fragrances since the beginning of modern perfumery, and during its early days aldehydes leant their airy energy to compositions meant to represent space. L-T. Piver was one of the first houses to use aldehydes, and their airy energy was in the composition of Astris, released in 1904. Astris, an invented word meant to evoke the idea of stars, captured the imagination of customers for decades. In the art deco age L-T. Piver used a star motif in new Baccarat bottles and an advertisement by Darcy.

(clockwise from left) © Coty, Guerlain, L-T. Piver

Jacques Guerlain used aldehydes in 1936 to evoke the heavens when he created Guerlain Vega, named for the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. The perfume was marketed for women in a “buoyant mood”. When it was released in the US, Vogue called it “sparkling and exciting” and Town & Country said Vega was a “star fallen from heaven and dropped in a bottle.” As we inched closer to actual space exploration by sending up the first animals in 1949, Vincent Roubert composed Meteor for Coty. (Roubert is famed for creating Knize Ten, Coty‘s L‘Aimant and Iris Gris for Jacques Fath) Meteor was advertised as having the “Flashing beauty of a shooting star”, no doubt twinkling from the aldehydes.

(counter-clockwise from left) © Unsplash (2), Aether Arts

Perfumers are imagining space differently then from the past, a cold metallic quality conveys the idea of the extraterrestrial. In 2019, indie perfumer Amber Jobin of Aether Arts created the Exobotany series of abstract, fantasy fragrances of other planets. Aether Arts Perfume Specimen No. 9 from “Kepler186-F” gives a pleasing, yet unearthly sensation of being in an alien forest after an ice storm, crunchy frozen metallic soil and greenery glazed with ice.

(clockwise from left) © NASA, Xerjoff Apollonia

Xerjoff’s Shooting Stars collection was inspired by the crashing of a meteorite fragment into Siberia. Apollonia is a homage to the space shuttle Apollo 11, through which the first moon landing took place, July 20th 1969.  Imagine beautiful chilly metal shavings on a cushy cloud of white musk and florals and you have Apollonia.

As with many things, the fantasy is more intriguing than reality.

Disclosure;  From my own collection. I received samples of the Exobotany fragrances from Aether Arts Perfume, tester of Spice Must Flow and a tester of Xerjoff Apollonia from Eden Square available at Perfumology

Marianne Butler, Sr. Contributor

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