I don’t believe in blind buying holiday perfumes as a gift unless it is a much-wanted bottle and that I have reservations even then. 2021 feels different because with worldwide lockdowns, brick and mortar doors were shuttered because of COVID-19 for much of the year. Samples are a great way to test fragrances you have read about before you buy-blind.
Each of the fragrances from Atelier Materi’s portfolio is focused on a single natural raw material, selected from the best terroir and with respect for fair trade. Atelier Materi Santal Blond by Lucas Sieuzac is ideal for everyday wear, comfortable worn under your corporate suit and is gender fluid.
In Parfumeurs Du Monde Makeda, Alexandre Isaie Helwani wanted to express not so much the dynamic aspect of the powerful Queen, as the tender side of the woman (strongly inspired by the “Song of Songs”). His initial idea was to construct the fragrance upon a combination of orris butter, sandalwood and vanilla, thus reflecting the idea of “gold and ivory” that Queen Makeda brought as gifts to Jerusalem.
Kiss My Name by Ramon Monegal blooms on the skin exuberant, glistening, like a ray of light bouncing between mirrors, creating the most delicious golden kaleidoscope, uncovering new facets with every angle of its rotation.
Jo Malone Silver Birch & Lavender personifies Coco Chanel’s opinion that simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance – pristine in an argentine fashion, all shimmer and sleek freshness. A well-tailored item retains its value, and in the skilled hands of senior perfumer Yann Vasnier of Givaudan, this cologne not only mirrors the crispness of the season, it will work perfectly well year ‘round: tonic in spring, refreshing in summer, and elegiac in the autumn.
Aether Arts Perfume Black Hole, by Amber Jobin, (the third in the Pandemic series which includes The Space Between and Contact) poses an inherent contradiction: turning an exploration of the unknowable into fragrance. But Black Hole is more than an intellectual exercise of creating something out of the ultimate nothing; it is also a sly olfactory rendering of “all the craziness that was/is 2020-2021.”
