Perfumes That Bring Me to My Knees
From Serviette to agar olfactory with a focus on the Midwest.
Hi all! I’m having a hard time sifting through the dregs of the cold season and absolutely cannot wait for the warmth to settle in. As such, this week I am sharing, alongside a rhapsodic review of Serviette’s discovery set, a year-old piece on the so-called (by me) “Midwest Perfume Boom” that was published behind a paywall by Dirt and has remained fairly inaccessible all this time. As always, if you want to read it and can’t swing the $1.50 minimum subscription fee, just shoot me a response to this email and we’ll make it work :-)
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How do I love Serviette? It’s absolutely impossible for me to count the ways. The perfumer/founder (a rarer combination than you’d think), Trey Taylor, sent over this discovery set alongside a hand-picked book. I received No. 91/92: A Diary of a Year on the Bus by Lauren Elkin and based on the other picks I’ve seen on the Serviette story from people who received this perfume/book pairing situation, Trey genuinely and thoughtfully picked out a different book for each recipient. The presentation, what with the Semiotext(e) and the embroidered handkerchief included, was already wowing me when I smelled the first fragrance. My jaw, I am not exaggerating, dropped open like a broken dummy’s.Scents like these are not being created elsewhere.
Starting with my least favorite, which is better than my favorite fragrance in most houses’ lineups, Frisson D’Hiver gives me the precise impression of a Red Vine candy frozen shallowly into an ice-capped flower field. I think something about the orange blossom + musk and vanilla is giving me that red “licorice” tang, which fades into the skin so elegantly that it hurt to rank this the lowest.
Next, Sour Diesel is the corrupt answer to Oddity’s Delulu, a peppery, rhubarb-heavy, candied kush confection that, again, takes an incredible, poignant journey on the skin. The cannabis note is pronounced and obvious but contains zero smokiness or char—this is fresh, sticky, pure bud baked into a peppered rhubarb galette (somehow to delicious effect). This is by far the longest-lasting of the five fragrances, which is my only gripe with them: ephemerality in perfume doesn’t bother me much, but I need a travel size, at least, so I can reapply these fragrances over the course of the day!
Byronic Hero is the Rose I never thought I’d find: damn sexy, medieval and smoldering in sensibility, rock-n-roll in an ancient, primal sense. This one is also longer-lasting: I applied it last night and still get hints of it when I turn my head today. It makes me want to grow my hair long and let it tangle, makes me want to blow clove smoke into my enemies’ faces, makes me want to do a poetry reading for the first time in five years—yeah, it’s lethal stuff. THIS is the rose hater’s rose perfume, like a rose perfume tried to commit suicide by pumping car exhaust into its closed garage.
Finally, my two favorites…
…number two is Ruche, an addictive and invigorating slap of pepper and raspberry and Galbanum straight to the dome, intensified by galbanum, a green, balsamic resin, and sandalwood at the bottom. This fragrance pulls absolutely zero punches and as such, it’s a miracle of creation that it works so well—if you’re easily triggered to headache by sandalwood, I’d still try this one out. It’s like that drink, an Adios Mother Fucker, that’s a combination of basically every hard liquor in the well but somehow goes down like water. I’d never thought I could fall in love with a raspberry fragrance as I don’t even eat the stuff, but this fragrance sits on the skin in such a creamy but sharp layer of enticement that I couldn’t help it.
Ohh, Priscus. This is Serviette’s newest scent and the first one I tried out of the box, and it will be my first full bottle from them whenever I get a goddamn job (still open to leads!). It is umeboshi to its natural conclusion, with plum blossom, wine, and fruit seeming to ferment in a solution of herbs and spices. I put this on and immediately CRAVED umeshu. The fragrance is lighthearted but stoic, mature but party-ready, and near-narcotic in its too-short fade on skin. It’s both syrupy and effervescent, like stewed plums poured onto sparkling spring water. It would work just as well in October as it does in March, and I look forward to wearing it year-round. I am a bad writer, I suppose, as I cannot describe to you in words how comforting, invigorating, and provocative Priscus is on my wrist, somehow all at once. This is a work of mad genius, and I hope I meet Trey sometime soon so I can gauge his madness for myself (I think it’s the really good kind).
Ugh. I hate to report this, but Dieux sent me a ton of Instant Angel for the product’s anniversary, and… this shit works. Once I started using it twice a day, the patches of dead skin I had from winter Tretonoin use completely disappeared and my skin has, quite honestly, never looked better. I’m SORRY I know it’s EXPENSIVE :(
This is a LOT less exciting than the previous items, but just wanted to let you know that right now the code BEST layers on to the already 40% off sale at Gap, so this 100% cotton T-shirt in a large variety of colors and sizes is under $14 right now. I might pick a few up, though these days I’m so wary of online shopping and there are barely any chain shops in PDX so I can never try stuff on before I buy, which is annoying. I really do need some basic tees, though.
I got the $18 ripoff of these mats, but if I could’ve, I’d have gotten this one—it seems a lot less janky and junky than mine, less liable to fall apart. I’ve only just started using my acupressure mat, so we’ll see if it satisfies anything besides my proclivity toward harmless pain! You can get 20% off and free shipping if it’s your first Grove purchase with WELCOME at checkout.
The Apocalyptic Sensibilities of the Midwestern Perfume Boom
Originally published by Dirt
Middle America’s fertile soil has proven the ideal ground for inspired new fragrance houses that teeter on the edge of all we know
If you have encountered a perfume that smells like a light bulb on the brink of fizzling out, a sparkling arcade with lime cola spilled across its freshly-waxed flooring, or a mysterious speculative infection that plagues the gluten industry in an imagined future, you’ve likely already noticed that a large percentage of the most radical, inspired, and specific fragrances currently on the market originate in the Midwest. Have you noticed, then, the apocalyptic sensibilities that permeate this new scene?
Over the past three years, houses like Clue, Pearfat Parfum, and agar olfactory (all three based in Chicago, Illinois) have redefined the perfume paradigm of the nation. Pushing a more sculptural understanding of scent with their experimental offerings, these houses have initiated a veritable “Midwestern Perfume Boom,” electrifying mainstream expectations of niche perfumery and establishing the Midwest both as a functional Mecca of the American fragrance industry and as a source of inspiration that continues to resonate throughout the world.
Aside from a shared origin point, there’s something more ineffable congealing these projects into a cohesive bloc, something that can be identified by scent. Fragrances like Multiball one of the most popular fragrances, by Pearfat Parfum’s Alie Kiral, are charged with tension between two facets of the Midwestern experience: familiar, quotidian aesthetics and an undeniable sense of desolation. A Michigan arcade appears upon first sniff—metallic top notes of “high score bells and chimes” are tempered by a buttery whiff of patchouli (I mentioned to Kiral that certain ingredients in her work act like MSG does in fast food, inducing saliva and nostalgia: here, patchouli fits this function)—but continuing to observe the scene reveals a potentially more ominous story. Why has the soda spilled across the cedarwood floor gone uncleaned?
Pearfat’s fragrances are set pieces completed by their wearer: to apply Multiball is to become a character occupying its arcade. However, Kiral notes that her perfumes are “not necessarily meant for everyday wear”—as I see it, they’re experiential pieces designed as dioramas one can appreciate either from within or from a safe distance. In the vein of a vanitas painting, a 17th century Dutch tradition of depicting rotting fruit alongside vacant skulls and snuffed out candles, an olfactory tableaux so active in the absence of life is a potent form of memento mori.
