Jardin Botanica Carlos Thays

Charles Thays a French botanist and landscape architect traveled to Argentina in the 1880s to study its rich flora, and stayed on to design many of its parks, namely, Plaza San Martin, and Jardín Botánico Carlos Thays, both in Buenos Aires.

Earlier this week perfume lovers of all kinds gathered at Aedes de Venustas boutique to welcome Argentinian perfumer Julian Bedel and his perfume collection Fueguia 1833 into the west village boutique. Karl Bradl, co-founder of Aedes (who over the years has guided me toward many a fragrance) confided that he was lured by Fueguia’s entire story, its look, but ultimately it is the fragrances that made the NYC launch a reality. It is an ambitious collection with over 50 fragrances. Fueguia’s story comes alive, through an intricately weaved narrative that blends a specific time in history, the personal, and raw materials that are unique and indigenous to South America. Each bottle comes in its very own wooden box that is handcrafted and made from fallen trees in the Valdivian forest.

 

Our name is a tribute to the meeting between Charles Darwin, Robert Fitz Roy and Fueguia Basket, a native from Tierra del Fuego who was abducted by Fitz Roy and returned three years later to Patagonia, during the journey which would give birth to Darwin’s Origin of Species…. Fueguia 1833 is homage to my ancestors who were naturalists and writers. Louis Bedel, Henry D’Orbigny, Maurice Bedel, René Bedel and Filiberto Oliveira de Cé-zar, roamed the world, or their own universe, and left the imprint of their singular, inquisitive minds. -Julian Bedel and Ama Amoedo Founders

 

Standing before the large display of fragrances, my friend asked me, how should I begin? And this question made me a bit tense, because smelling fragrances has always been instinctual, and if someone along the way has taught me a method, I clearly forgot all about it in that moment. However I do know that oddly enough before I smell perfumes I look at them and notice the color of their juice and then proceed from light to dark, the darker the color usually equals complexity. Fueguia has organized the collection into seven categories based on the perfumers inspiration, for example, people, places, writers, are a just a few. But in the moment, at Aedes I let the juice color and my gut direct me, and I was specifically drawn to the most incredible green hue.

I reached out and took THAYS in my hand. Thays is an ode to the Mate leaf Julian told me, I’m always happy to smell fragrances with a perfumer. Mate is the national drink of Argentina, a tea that is similar to green tea, but has a more intense aroma. Julian stood with my friend and us three smelled Thays together. Julian was quiet at first and then mentioned cis-3-Hexen-1-ol, as he exhaled. This note smells like fresh-cut green grass, which I didn’t smell immediately. The green in the fragrance comes across as a green-aldehydic note, less powdery more fizzy and seems to stay constant throughout the composition. Thays starts out crisp with a citrus top that leads to a green earthy bitterness. Osmanthus enters and seems to cut through the green bitterness adding a creamy floralcy. The floralcy is not in full bloom though, which makes this fragrance intriguing. Thays is a fragrance that was born of lure and spans centuries from Darwin to Fueguia Basket, from Charles Thays to Argentina, from Julian Bedel to his familial ties, from Aedes to my skin.

Patagonia (Photo: The National Geographic)

My introduction to Fueguia 1833 got me thinking about different ways to approach a fragrance collection. My conclusion:  I really don’t think there is one sure way to do it, and this made me think of dishwashing, yes dishwashing. My idealistic approach to washing dishes has always been glass first, dishes, pots and pans, and silverware last. However there is another side of dishwashing that maybe you have experienced. It is a bewitching time that almost borders on loneliness, it is that quiet time, when the water is running and thoughts rush in and out, and if you are lucky everything slows down and thoughts gently settle down leading to perhaps remembering a forgotten task on a to-do list, or even better an epiphany.

Thays brought the latter.

–Valerie Vitale, Contributing Editor