Christopher Brosius has been creating specific scented landscapes for almost twenty years now. From his early days at Demeter Fragrance Library until the founding of his own line, CB I Hate Perfume, in 2004; Mr. Brosius has been discovering what can be achieved in perfume composition  rather than creating just what smells pretty.

 

Mr. Brosius has made a cottage industry of making perfumistas confront fragrances, like Demeter Dirt or CB I Hate Perfume Burning Leaves, and find a raw primal beauty in the scents that make up our daily life. Of the fragrances that I have encountered that Mr. Brosius has composed they all have the ability to transport me to a strongly scented milieu suggested by the label on the bottle.

My favorite CB I Hate Perfume fragrance is At The Beach 1966. In this fragrance Mr. Brosius re-creates a South Florida day at the beach replete with the smells of sea, sun-baked skin and Coppertone suntan lotion. It is that latter accord which makes Mr. Brosius so fascinating as a perfumer; his ability to find the accord that truly sets the table for a singular scented experience.

There are many different series that can be found at CB I Hate Perfume but the one that has been the most consistently interesting to me is the Metamorphosis Series. With a perfumer like Mr. Brosius one could worry that his inspiration for a Metamorphosis Series could be Kafka and we would get a fragrance called “Bug”. Thankfully, I think, the metamorphosis Mr. Brosius is interested in is that of change both in nature and in the way a fragrance morphs on the wearer’s skin.

M1 was Narcissus and this was a deep floral over the smell of wet stones. M2 was Black March and this felt like a further interpretation of Demeter Dirt as Black March felt like damp earth containing spring bulbs looking to burst to life. Black March is one of my favorite CB I Hate Perfume scents because it does feel like a freshly turned flower bed just after a thorough soaking. M3 November was the polar opposite of Black March as November brought alive the waning days of fall; fallen leaves with the hint of smoke in the air coupled with the harvest notes of pumpkin and apples.

The most recent addition to the Metamorphosis Series is M4 Room With A View. The view from this room is of a field of violets in the height of summer, somewhere nearby is a vineyard and some fennel is drying underneath the window.

M4 Room With A View opens with a full house of ionones which give that dual astringent floral accord that makes up violet on its best days. Room With A View is one of those good days for violet. Mr. Brosius keeps the violet from becoming too sharp and quite skillfully finds a way to round it off and make it feel softer than in other violet fragrances. Proceeding from the violets, the far-off smell of grapes ripening on the vine and fennel drying in the sun appear. The mix of the fruit and herbal quality takes the violet to a unique place. It is the next accord to appear that really makes this feel like summer as a dusty earth note arrives. This is that accord that I remember from kicking up dust when I walked through a summer desiccated field as a kid; an almost chalky, mineral feel to it. As all four of these accords comingle in the later stages of Room With A View I feel as if I am standing at a window looking out on a hillside colored purple with violets in the middle of August.

M4 Room With A View has average longevity and below average sillage.

Mr. Brosius has once again created a point in time at a place in time, using scent as skillfully as Mr. Scott from Star Trek uses a transporter, to beam us to another world as we are suddenly somewhere else; welcome to the landscape of the mind.

Disclosure: This review was based on a bottle of M4 Room With A View purchased from CB I Hate Perfume.

-Mark Behnke, Managing Editor