When I was in my early teens we visited Yosemite National Park and while the time in Yosemite was special I left our trip to California with another place imprinted into my memory. We took a day trip from our campsite a little northeast of the park to Bodie, California. Bodie is one of the best preserved Gold Rush ghost towns and has been protected as a California State Park. Bodie was in its heyday at the height of the Gold Rush from 1877-1880. There were 65 saloons lining the mile long Main Street with a red light district at one end. This mix made Bodie equivalent to other more well-known rough and tumble boom towns like Deadwood and Tombstone. By 1881 the prospectors had moved on and Bodie began a 30-year decline into decrepitude with the buildings eventually being the only reminder that people ever were here. By the 1920’s it was officially labeled a “ghost town”.

When I visited it was hard to imagine these buildings were all almost 100-years old. They were still standing and it felt like the townspeople had just left. There were still chips stacked next to the roulette wheel, the hymn numbers were still on the church board, and the signs were still legible over the doors. Even so if I had any doubt that there was no life left in Bodie my nose clued me in as the scent of decay was on the wind. It never was something that was unpleasant but it had a feel of somberness and it made me wonder about the people who lived here back in the boom times. I haven’t thought about Bodie for years but that all changed when I tried the new Aftelier Sepia EDP as Mandy Aftel also clearly likes ghost towns too.

Ms. Aftel has been participating in an ongoing series called Letters To A Fellow Perfumer on NathanBranch.com. This exercise of writing about the creation of a fragrance has been fascinating to read. The latest interchange took place between Ms. Aftel and Laurie Erickson of Sonoma Scent Studio and lead to the creation of Sepia. Through those letters Ms. Aftel spoke of the choices she made to convey the sense of “elegant decay” she was trying to create. For those of you who want to learn about what it takes to realize a particular vision in a perfume this is an excellent place to start. I can tell you that Ms. Aftel captured my scent memory of standing on Bodie’s Main Street inhaling the breeze off of the surrounding mountains.

Ms. Aftel uses yellow mandarin and blood cedarwood as her top notes. The former note adds a floral citrus quality that feels like a clean mountain breeze and it is the blood cedarwood which captures the sense of weathered wood warmed in the noonday sun. These make for a lightly veiled beginning which seems to expand and fade. The next phase of Sepia is the well mined earth surrounding the town. What is quite remarkable is how Ms. Aftel constructs her earthy accord by using coffee and cocoa. This grounded accord is joined by an aquatic pink lotus which reminds you while this might be a ghost town it isn’t a desert. The final triptych of notes add the element of “elegant decay” she wanted as she combines cepes, ambergris, and oud. As in the heart Ms. Aftel shows how something unexpected can be coaxed out of notes you think you know as an aficionado. All together it makes for a supernatural experience.

Sepia EDP has above average longevity and below average sillage. The EDP which I tested was very close wearing. There is also a perfume concentration available and I can only imagine that to be longer lasting and closer wearing.

Ms. Aftel has been one of the greatest influences on this renaissance of independent perfumers we are currently in the midst of. With Sepia she shows she still has much to teach all of us about what can be accomplished by the masters of their art.

Disclosure: This review was based on a decant of the EDP purchased from Surrender to Chance.

We have a 1.5mL sample of Sepia to giveaway to one reader. To be eligible leave a comment about your favorite Aftelier perfume or an example of “elegant decay”. We will draw one winner on June 3, 2012 via random.org.

We announce the winners only on site and on our Facebook page, so Like Cafleurebon and use our RSS option…or your dream prize will be just spilt perfume.

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor