I Am Trash by Etat Libre D’Orange

It’s odd how good memories attach themselves to bad smells. For me, years of trashy holidays to trashy holiday resorts have indelibly linked the smell of sub-standard drainage infrastructure to top-notch fun. So when Summer rolls round and I get a whiff of sewage, I get a little bump of nostalgia. Sick, but true.

I remember, when I was about 8, I’d go and stay with my cousins in France in the Summer holidays. Oddly, the scent I recall from those times is a very specific French-cheese, overripe fruit smell – not unpleasant. Bruised peaches – sticky, homely and comforting.

With its aesthetic roots in decomposition and wriggling worminess, I expected to get something similar from Les Fleurs du Dechet  / I Am Trash – an overripe, fruity, earthy scent, deep and interesting. I was ready for it.

But what’s grown out of the months of anticipation is something more unexpected.

On first spray there’s a spray of fresh green apple peel, as if the fruit’s being cut up right in front of you. Within seconds, the apple turns to a vibrant, dripping juicy mango. And while you’re getting your head around that, it changes again to a supersweet pineapple. It’s quite the ride around the fruit salad.

Over the next half hour, things calm down a bit, and we take a slower, more measured step – floral notes begin to appear, blending smoothly with soft strawberry tones. This perfume’s nice. It’s EASY. It might even be a crowd-pleaser.

But then, like a weed pushing up, Les Fleurs du Dechet / I Am Trash grows out of the benign and becomes something wilder and untamed. To call it a dry-down feels wrong, because it gets richer and riper; the fruit turns, growing ever-sweeter, greener and fermenting. It takes time, but it rots as it blossoms.

And then, just as things were getting interesting, it fades into a pretty skin scent.

I’m confused. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or enchanted.

There’s incredible artistry in the opening. How can a scent be designed to spin through so many distinctive fruits in seconds? And the way that freshness gives way so fast to more luscious, mulchy tones is remarkable; just as in Ogilvy’s time-lapse video, we experience decay in hyper-speed.

And then it all just…disappears.

Maybe that’s the point.

You can try and buy I Am Trash / Les Fleurs du Dechet at Bloom Perfumery in Covent Garden. 50ml EDP for £82, 100ml for £115. 

Upcycled and zero-waste notes:

Akigalawood  

Apple  

Atlas Cedar 

Iso-E-Super  

Rose Absolute 

Sandalore

Over the Chocolate Shop by 4160 Tuesdays – review

Over the Chocolate Shop from 4160 Tuesdays

Another new 4160 Tuesdays fragrance. Another blind buy. I told myself that I could always pass it on. I don’t NEED a chocolate scent.

I don’t NEED to eat a whole chocolate orange, either. But as I’m polishing off that delicious flakey core (and it is the most delicious part), I know what I need doesn’t really matter. Chocolate is desire and impulse and excess, and all of that’s bottled in this scent.

Over the Chocolate Shop is indie perfumer Sarah McCartney’s latest incarnation of one of her earliest fragrances, made for her goddaughter who lived in a house on top of a chocolate shop. It’s a reworking with superior ingredients including cocoa extract, hazelnut CO2 extract, vanilla absolute and coffee extract. She says she’s ‘happy with it now’. I’m glad. It makes me happy too. 

Although it’s so cocoa-supercharged it’ll have Augustus Gloop pulling his trunks on, this chocolate experience is no guilt-inducing Dairy-milk binge. Over the Chocolate Shop is grown-up, quality stuff. A proper gourmand, and like White Queen, indulgent without the sweetness.

Like an 85% cocoa solids bar from Rabot Estate, you only need a little bit to feel satisfied.

Zero calories. No regrets.

Batch number 1 sold out in under 24 hours. Batch number 2 is macerating right now, from £35 for 30ml. Be quick – it’ll go like hot chocolate. 

Holy smokes – Zoologist are launching a T-REX scent?!

What on cretaceous earth does a Tyrannosaurus Rex smell like? Only a couple of months’ wait to find out. This Autumn, Zoologist are releasing a T-Rex fragrance and I am ridiculously over-excited. This boots Etat Libre D’Orange’s ‘I am Trash’ right off the top spot as my most hotly awaited scent of this Autumn.

Following their stunning recent releases Moth and Hyrax, I can only hope Zoologist stay on their roll for this one and I can’t wait to hear the notes. My guesses: got to be lots of thick, green jungly things. Ferns.  Probably some big shouty florals too (apparently the cretaceous era was when flowering plants stared to emerge, and – new fact alert –  Tyrannosaurus Rex had a surprisingly highly developed sense of smell). It’s got to be packed with animalics –  leather? Perhaps even a touch of something sulphurous and volcano-ey?

There’s got to be loads of resinous amber (for the dino DNA) and maybe a big dollop of Jeff Goldblum for smoothness. Maybe. Can’t wait.

 

 

White Queen from 4160 Tuesdays with CaFleureBon

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”

Created by 4160 Tuesdays to celebrate CaFleureBon’s 8th anniversary, White Queen is also one quarter of 4160T’s Spring Scents collection – a set of limited editions, crowd-funded by fans of the fragrance house.

I ordered 9mls of each, and eagerly testing the four, I wrinkled my nose a little on first sniff of White Queen. Odd. Spicy incense with bagfuls of fruit. Not for me.

Still, three out of four ain’t bad, and I’d read enough enthusings to know someone’d be up for a swap. I could tell it was special. Shame it wasn’t my type.

AND THEN I KEPT COMING BACK TO IT. Ah, here we go.

Having initially written it off as deep and interesting but not for me, just a couple of wears later, it’d taken off its glasses and shaken its hair out. I was hooked.

Thing is, White Queen is one of the finest examples of a non-linear scent I’ve experienced, with three distinct stages of development. And that intriguing complexity is what rocketed it out of the friend-zone and into my heart.

It starts off boozy and woody, like a rum cocktail spilt on an old bar-top. There’s something faintly medicinal there too.

As the booze develops, the fruitiness comes in, along with warming spices. This is no light and breezy spring scent – this is a Dickensian Christmas in a bottle. There’s a marshmallowy-ness there too. This must be how my nose understands the Methyl Laitone, which others have picked up as a creamy note.

Some hours later, it all of a sudden turns very wet and earthy (this must be down to the vetiver and maybe the veramoss), just like sticking your nose down a rabbit hole. How topsy-turvy. How clever.

Actually, I think it’s one of Sarah McCartney’s masterpieces. Well worth a try.

And then another one, just in case.

 

Truth and Beauty in Eden’s Garden from 4160 Tuesdays

Join the 4160 Tuesdays News group on facebook, and you step into a world of temptation.

Populated by true passionistas for all things Sarah McCartney (the house’s Nose), their enthusings have turned my handful-sized collection of 4160T scents into a fragrant drawerload.

So it’s apt that Sarah’s latest venture, fan-funded via Indiegogo, is called Truth and Beauty in Eden’s Garden; a collection of four Spring scents. And the hum on the 4160T facebook group has been building for weeks.

Silk scarf to complement the range, designed by James Skinner of Dalliance & Noble. Image from 4160 Tuesday’s Indiegogo page.

That hum turned into a buzz I couldn’t resist. Four 9ml spring scents plucked from the tree and eagerly awaited.

Will report back.