Singing girl, Miroslav Murazov (1960). Creative direction and digital editing by a_nose_knows for Ormonde Jayne Tsarina.
Springs came expectedly behind the Red Curtain, irremediably following fluffy white winters, and reliably preceding yellow hot summers. They were sung and celebrated obstinately, and replicated in our first textbooks with endearingly clumsy Socialist drawings, pictured as through a lens: happy children holding hands, trees in bountiful blossoms, round-faced suns laughing with full sets of teeth and rosy cheeks over fields of smiling snowdrops.
Photo by Vladimir Stepanov. Creative direction and digital editing by a_nose_knows for Ormonde Jayne Tsarina
We were kids and needn’t much to come alive, thin and pale and starved for joy as we were; the grey couldn’t dampen our spirits and hunger, when felt, was so familiar that we simply ignored it while our parents worried at our blueness; the fear was not ours to bear and the cold, well, it said on the radio that it’d go—so, at the first sign of warmth, we believed the radio, and we bucked.
So springy we were, pained to the bone with explosive outpours of desperate laughter at the first light of, well, spring that we felt, somewhat, sown into the awaking dirt; we could hear the sap boiling up trees while bent adults whitewashed the trunks; we got drunk with bee buzzings and sprung, like goats, to soak up the timid rays from tops of fences. Warm, we’d shake the winter off—and then we’d play.
Photo by Dana Kyndrová. Creative direction and digital editing by a_nose_knows for Ormonde Jayne Tsarina
All of our games, poor of toys and rich of numbers, involved stories; every story involved quests and every quest involved a woman above all others; in our grey fantasy short of Disney and even color books our words, widowed of riches, failed to separate one queen from the next, much like in life where our mothers looked the same, wore the same few colors, and smiled the same, one corner of the mouth pointing downwards. Beauty for us was not a stunning moment; there was no reference point for standing out, no example of opulence, no resource for exploration, no variety of style and no chance for outspokenness. We had but details to construct charm—so our aesthetic, already melancholic from listening to grainy Chekhov radio plays, became a tapestry of quiet splendors: our queens had a sad smile; they walked with no sound; they always wore ethereal scarves; they smelled like clothes washed with French soap and line-dried; they had white teeth and shiny, petal-shaped nails.
Photo by Arkady Shaikhet. Creative direction and digital editing by a_nose_knows for Ormonde Jayne Tsarina
It’s them I think of with Ormonde Jayne Tsarina: cool and composed, it carries its greenness like an innate core: the citrus is substantial, the condimentation is necessary and sufficient, the leafiness- undeniable and natural. The detailing, in contrast, is individually charming and assembles a presence both stunning and discreet: the flowers are crisp, the vanilla is just, the woods are elegant and serious without imposing. Trailing it all like a memory or a melancholic still from The Cherry Orchard, a suede so fine that it’s nostalgic.
Self portrait, creative direction and digital editing by a_nose_knows for Ormonde Jayne Tsarina
Ormonde Jayne Tsarina is not an ode to a queen, or, indeed an eternal feminine; an ode would be pompous and intentional and reductive, in a way, of all humaneness. For how can you ode to the discreet, without taking it out of its penumbra and, thus, ruining its very definitory core? Tsarina belongs WITH the discreet, not to represent it as a distilled, concentrated essence but to complete it as breath, a shadow, or indeed a detail would: neutral in and of itself, glorious as the drop that makes the difference.
Official notes: mandarin, bergamot, coriander, cassis, hedione, freesia, jasmine sambac, iris, suede, sandalwood, cedarwood, vanilla bean base, labdanum, musk.
Disclaimer: Ormonde Jayne Tsarina tester provided. Thank you so much.
– dana sandu, Editor
Geza Schoen and Linda Pilkington courtesy of Linda Pilkington
Editor’s note: According to the official release I was sent in 2012: “On Friday October 29, 2012 aboard the Orient Express, Linda Pilkington, founder, perfumer and creative director of Ormonde Jayne launched “The Four Corners of the Earth”, a quartet of perfumes which pays homage to the different parts of the world that have inspired her and acknowledge the rich diversity of Linda’s hometown, London. Geza Schoen is the perfumer in collaboration with Linda Pilkington for all four in the series: Qi, Tsarina, Nawab de Oudh and Montabaco”. – Michelyn Camen, Editor-in-Chief
photo courtesy of Ormonde Jayne
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