Aether Arts Perfume My Body, My Choice collage by Amber Jobin©
Fragrance has often taken its inspiration from controversial sources; drug culture, punk rock, and, of course, sex and the human body, for example. But politics is not an area into which perfumers often venture overtly. However, if, as Ralph Ellison wrote, “social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Dickens, Goya, and Twain?” It should not surprise anyone that actions by powerful public institutions could also inspire fragrance makers to create. Indeed, protest art – whose most famous canvas is Picasso’s Guernica – has been with us for thousands of years. But unlike the ancient Roman satires, whose anarchic impulses pique and undermine without a definite goal, modern protest art aims to provoke, to anger, to look inward and act outward. And while it can be brutally beautiful, it isn’t often pretty. Aether Arts Perfume My Body, My Choice follows this tradition and establishes that fragrance, like paintings, music, and poetry, can be a howl of anger and a demand for change.
Amber has won two “Golden Pears”- the Art and Olfaction Awards
Aether Arts Perfume founder and artisan perfumer Amber Jobin, two-time Art & Olfaction Awards winner (for this year’s Mayan Chocolate – one of my top ten of 2021 – and 2014’s John Frum), is one of our most thoughtful and inventive perfumers. Her work covers an enormous intellectual and artistic landscape reaches from the Black Rock desert to outer space. But it can also be nakedly intimate (Nude Moderne, Daydream in Blue), exploring our relationship to our bodies and sex. Aether Arts Perfume My Body, my Choice, is, in Jobin’s own words, “a protest.”
On the Aether Arts Perfume website, Jobin explains the perfume’s basis: “I keep my politics to myself unless asked directly, but as a woman I can’t stay silent about this issue. Now that Roe vs. Wade has been overturned, women in this country will no longer have full autonomy over their own bodies. Body autonomy is a basic human right and the foundation upon which many other human rights are based and a critical component of the right to privacy as protected by the Constitution. This decision puts at risk 50% of the population by severely limiting reproductive health care and safety. Make no mistake, women are going to die because of this ruling. All of this makes my blood boil—the very same blood that nourishes my own womb. Women are being held hostage by their own fertility.”
No Hangers
My Body, My Choice unfolds like images on multimedia screens, with bodily notes, rose, and metal in a fragrance as unconventional as its subject matter. My initial impression is that this is actually a quiet fragrance, woody and introspective. It starts, to my nose, not with the blood note I was expecting, but with a muted aura of sex; warm aromas of sawdust, pencil shavings mixing with musky sweat. It is quickly followed by the medicinal smell of the hospital; the antiseptic odor of Band-Aids and powder, like Montale’s gorgeous White Aoud stripped of its creamy fluffiness. I expect that there is oud in here along, perhaps, with sandalwood. As minutes tick by in the waiting room, a metallic rose offers itself up. Jobin is exceptionally talented at evoking the various aspects of metal in her fragrances, teasing out its chill, its minerality. But what is fascinating is the way the rose, which is airy, fresh and gentle, blooms alongside the cold smell of steel. It is unsettling and tender all at once.
I need to sit with this awhile. Half an hour later, I smell the fragrance afresh. This time, I am struck by the perfume’s coolness, which suggests mint and, as I think back to the powderiness of the top, some iris. The medicinal smell is still prominent, but the rose-metal accord is now central. After a time, I go out into the heat. In the swelter of July, Aether Arts Perfume My Body, My Choice comes over as woody, oud-y, tinged with rose. There is now a detectable saltiness to the metallic accord that suggests blood. And always, there is a sense of something synthetic in there as indifferent and hard as fluorescent light.
My Body My Rules
I know some of you are likely thinking this sounds unwearable. You’d be wrong. At every stage in its trajectory, My Body, My Choice is, at heart, a compelling woody fragrance punctuated with contrasting warm oud and animalic notes and frigid florals, neither feminine nor masculine. Whether it is something you would want to sport, speaks probably more about your political leanings than whether it is an objectively good fragrance. I believe it is. I commend it as a thoughtful, unconventional woods perfume that reminds us that the convergence of art and politics is essential human expression. “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” – Bertolt Brecht
Notes: Angry blood accord, sharp objects accord, bodily fluids accord.
Disclaimer: Sample of Aether Arts My Body, My Choice kindly provided by Aether Arts Perfume. My opinions, as always, are my own.
Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor
Amber Jobin was Michelyn’s Rising Star of 2014
Aether Arts My Body My Choice 5 ml photo by Amber Jobin
Thanks to the generosity of Amber Jobin, we have a 5 ml bottle of My Body, My Choice for one registered reader worldwide. You must register of your comment will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment discussing what strikes you about My Body, My Choice, where you live. No matter your politics, how do you feel about perfume as a form of protest and/or a demand for change? Draw closes 7/27/2022.
all photos by Aether Arts Perfumes
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