Dawn Spencer Hurwitz

“This is not a needle, I am not going to poke you, she said reaching toward my arm with a super thin tube. You do not need a ton of this stuff on,” said she putting on me the tiniest amount of her Special Formula X out of a skinny test tube that was, in fact, soft, and not pokey at all. Then she leaned into my arm and breathed in. I waited impatiently until she raised her head and looked at me. “What does it smell like to you? Which of your perfumes will suit me? I want to smell, too!” I blurted out all three sentences as if they were one word. I was getting ready to have one of the best smelling experiences of my lifetime. I was already having a blast.

This is a picture from my actual consultation

This is how my smell and tell fragrance consultation with Dawn Spencer Hurwitz started. A few minutes later the entire large counter of her Essence Studio was covered by bottles with the sprayed papers sitting out. Dawn was bringing in more fragrances, telling me about them, spraying them on paper and sorting them on the counter. I was giving enthusiastic yeses, unapologetic nos, “could you please put this aside, I’d like to know where it’s going”, “I am really not sure about this one.”

Red Dahlia Mandala

Another fragrance invoked a more complex response from me. Quieletes Rouges made me recall some of my childhood dreams that had never come true – that I actually chose not to pursue, choosing other dreams and other plans over them. Ira Progoff, a specialist in intensive diary writing, recommends a journaling exercise on just these kinds of crossroads of our lives, the roads we took and did not take. Back then, I did not know about this exercise, but on the smell and tell consultation with Dawn I found a perfume for a woman I would have become had I taken the road I dreamed of as a child. I found a perfect perfume for her – but now I needed to find one for me.

Khyphi incense

Cardamom and Khyphi was one of those “could you set this aside please” ones. I waited out the top notes dominated by cardamom, as if I just had ground some light green pods for my morning coffee and wanted to see what a day would be like if it started with such a perfect morning cup.  I was curious about khyphi, the incense made from precious woods and resins, sweetened by dry fruit, the recipe survived through the centuries coming to us from ancient Egypt. Dawn was working on a collection of perfumes of Egypt (I was hoping to buy one of her perfume bottles a day later in the Denver Art Museum but could not locate it in the museum store).

Persephone with the Pomegranate by Charles Moffat (2008)

On my skin the smell rose up toward my nose, and I looked at Dawn, confused. Sitting in a cloud of spicy lightly sweetened incense, I was at a loss for words. I was catching a thick smell of perfectly blended magic. But what could I make of it? I could not describe the magic in words, I could only experience it.  Finally, I said very slowly, “I love the way it smells. I just can’t imagine I would be able to wear it anywhere except home.” I did not add that I had a hard time imagining wearing it around anyone except myself, but I did think that, too. This unique combination of spicy cardamom and cinnamon, light touch of honey, and the earthiness of resins had a power to pull me into my inner world. I almost heard a soft click of an oyster shell around me as if I had become a pearl inside. From out of the shell I said, “Just like Persephone, you know, getting pulled into the World of the Depths, Hades, for the very first time.” Just like Persephone I knew I was being drawn in and did not know if I would ever be able to come out. Dawn looked at me and said calmly, “I know many people who have a perfume that is just for themself. They only wear it on their own – when they meditate. When they paint. When they…” “When they write,” echoed I, “when they journal.”

Anais Nin

My journal! One of the few things I’d take with me to a deserted island.  It can be an island in itself, populated, not deserted, but always providing the air of solitude that is so easy to breathe in, a workbench and a playground, a place to be one with myself, a safe haven for restoration and growth.  Anais Nin who kept a journal all her life said that it became “an island in which I could find refuge in an alien land, write French, think my thoughts, hold onto my soul, to myself” (from Conversations with Anais Nin).  It started out as a letter to her father – a letter never sent to a man who was never to return – it became a spiritual island, it was blamed by her famous lover Henri Miller and her no-less famous psychoanalyst Dr. Otto Rank as her obsession, but she kept making the time for herself, kept writing secretly in a journal, and it had become a nourishing well of creativity and a source for strength.

Green Mandala

I understood the importance of a perfume for me alone, so I took a sample with me and bought a bottle before the end of the year. It was my companion through a lot of writing, cleaning house, inner work on grounding and centering myself, stressful deadlines, finishing the projects, and grading a mile high pile of final papers a week before Christmas. It was my companion through many things I did by myself. The liquid in the bottle crept toward the label line, then lower (you do not need a whole lot, it projects wonderfully). My spiritual island had in it a sense of a home, a hearth, a spiritual center that is also nourishing to the things of the Earth. Incense and smoky resins, baking spices and a touch of sweetness – I needed it all and could not have one without the other.

Anais Nin Veiled

One day I was spending a weekend with friends. We planned relaxation near the fireplace, good laughing, and some board games. I decided to wear my me-perfume to this company. It did not go unnoticed – my friend asked me what I was wearing – is there any patchouli in it, he asked? (his wife volunteered the info “patchouli means he likes it”). She sniffed my neck and we all kept playing and laughing.  Simply, just like this, the secret inner woman in me had made her move out. First, she showed herself to friends she was most comfortable with. Then she followed with a wider and deeper footprint. Again, I could find my thoughts echoing with Anais Nin’s experiences of integrating the secretive woman of a journal, an inner woman of dreams, fantasies and poetry, and an outer woman who acted as everyone’s cheerful helper in the world:

“I started out terribly engrossed in dreams, the spiritual, the reverie.  […] I had lived in books and imagination so […] I had to find the earth. […] When I balanced the two worlds – earth and imagination – then came the period of greatest creativity.  I began to produce almost a book a year” (from Conversations with Anais Nin)

Persephone with the Pomegranate by Kris Waldherr

By now I have worn Cardamom and Khyphi to lectures and symphony concerts, to friends, to parties, and an occasional airplane ride. This perfume became a bridge on which something of me that was the innermost went into the outside world, on sure footing. Like Persephone with a candle going back down to the depths of the Underworld all by herself and by her own will – this time not pulled by her husband Hades, coming in; not assisted by beautiful messenger Hermes, coming out. Like Persephone who had already gotten into the habit of going in and back out, out and back in, navigating both these worlds and their widths and depths on her own.

Thanks to DSH Perfumes we have a 1dram mini of Cardamom & Khyphi to giveaway. To be eligible leave a comment on  the perfume you wear "just for yourself" or your favorite Dawn Spencer Hurwitz perfume. We will draw one winner on November 26, 2012.

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 spilled perfume.

–Olga Rowe, Contributor