The Evolution of Chéngmén: A New Limited Edition Perfume for 2023
John Biebel
The first germinating seed of the limited edition fragrance Chéngmén is probably a set of memories I have from the years that I spent living in New York, quite close to Chinatown. I’d often pass through there on my way to college classes (particularly in the years when I was living in the financial district.) There were any number of stores that sold various botanical goods, usually pharmacies and apothecaries, and the items they carried would range from chrysanthemum flowers to powdered deer antler. Along with their associated smells were the other smells of preserved fruits (like salted plums and olives). Parallel to these scents was a notion that the lines between what was food and what was medicine were far less distinct than they might be elsewhere.
Often when I am composing perfumes, I begin with a small idea, or a few ingredients that I’ve grouped together, and as I work, an idea emerges from out of the center of this endeavor. (It’s rarer to begin with a fully formed idea that is then simply executed intact.) With my latest project, I decided to work with oud, and I spent a lot of the late summer smelling different kinds of rare oud from a few countries in southeast Asia. Together, they became a central circle around which other circles joined or intersected. These other circles were formed from other ingredients, and soon a triad arose: oud accord, red champaca flower accord, and orris-ambergris-olive accord (or, as I sometimes referred to it, the “fatty” accord, since it was so substantial and buttery.) As these smells joined, my recollections of the smells from Chinese apothecaries from a lifetime of visits came back to me and the core idea took shape.
Some of our ideas are vast, and stretch across a horizon. Others start at one edge and wash to one side. Still others are microcosms, such as the evolving perfume Chéngmén. It emerged as a world within a world. As I explored linguistic matches for what was happening within the perfume, the notion of a somewhat closed world, or a city that was fortified (closed within a gate) reverberated, along with the writings of modern Chinese author Wenfu Lu, whose work I’d read about 10 years previously. In his story “World of Dreams, a Valediction” (1983) he wanders in his thoughts and words through memories and the streets of Suzhou. Revisiting his work was like picking up loose threads and weaving them into something taught and supple.
“I would brush past those stone pillars as I entered the lane and stopped before one of the doors. A bamboo plaque was nailed to it, and the door was never closed. In the entryway an old tailor-cum-watchman would do his business, watching the entrance in return for a reduced rent. Or there would be an old woman in glasses, half-blind and bent over an embroidery frame full of dragons, phoenixes and bright butterflies. She would be one of those seamstresses who spent their whole lives making bridal clothes for others. Even though her eyesight was going, when wearing glasses she could still split the coloured silken threads into eight strands. Down the entryways of this kind there were often six-leaved doors, some cream-coloured, some with gold-leaf on a dark-blue ground, but here the gold had turned black in uneven blotches. Only the first panel of the door would be open so that it was impossible to see at one glance what went on within. I might slide inside but still could not see very much on entering, coming instead into a dark, dim world, a seemingly endless corridor.” - Wenfu Lu
Wenfu Lu’s world unfolds like a slow ride on a bicycle, where bits of one tightly packed neighborhood blur into another, held together by the threading sounds that linger and fade out as a turn is made down one narrow lane. Even time fades in and out of focus as he recollects vignettes of water taxis, vegetables carried from river vendors to houses along the city walls, and timeless reflections of moonlight over water under a bridge. And at other times, his memories of the densely-built Suzhou are less idyllic:
“I once lived in another kind of lane with high surrounding walls on either side, so high that one had to crane to see the top; no pink apricot could reach over these walls, and only the spring vines were able to climb up and hang down in tassels from the top. The heavy main gates were always tightly shut so that not a morsel of intimacy could squeeze out. Two mounting blocks like strange beasts lay on either side of the gates, glowering at the screen wall opposite, sombre and fierce. The screen wall had a carved stone border and a plain centre. There were few passers-by in lanes such as these, but occasionally a flower-seller would utter the long drawn-out cry: ‘Who will buy my white orchids?’ For the rest, there were only the sparrows cheeping and chattering on the gatehouse and the magpies hopping on and off the eaved walls.”
When the perfume was coming into its completion, I was thinking of a way to express some of the smaller stories that were evolving along the way, and I thought visually of the very arresting and fascinating visualizations that Alison Goldfrapp was using for her music alongside her album The Love Invention (2023). They are a mixture of AI video and AI/Visualizers; that layering of thousands of algorithmically generated images with motion was exactly the kind of dream-thinking that was parallel to the smell of Chéngmén and the “story” of it as well.
Promotional film, AI animation: Chéngmén, film by Gijs Eggink, music by John Biebel.
Creating perfumes isn’t a linear process - there isn’t a distinct beginning or an end, and in this way, trying to ascertain a “message” is never the point for me. Perfume is a passage, it’s a small portion of a dream. Perhaps even more importantly, it’s making something from (almost) nothing - a composition that is lifeless that has some essence breathed into it through the use of imagination. When Wenfu Lu imagined the Suzhou of his younger years, was it the same? Had he grown used to the way it’d changed over the years? He’d seen governments come and go, his own writing had been subject to severe scrutiny over the years. His work persists.
“At night the teahouses became resorts of storytellers, and then the strumming of pipas was accompanied by the soft lilt of the Suzhou dialect. Suzhou-style storytelling and ballad-singing were high-pitched and beautiful, while the vending cry of those selling spiced tea-flavoured eggs was filled with sadness. I had not realized that a small winding lane could change so infinitely, be so different within and without, with its rows of houses dividing land and water, silence and movement. On one side was the world with all its joys, sorrows and hubbub. On the other side were waves and moonlight, and also that low, reverberating sound of an evening Buddhist bell, making it seem as if the world could be forgotten.”
城門
Primary Accords and Notes:
Top Notes: Lemon, bergamot, aldehydes, fruit notes
Middle Notes: Red champaca flower, lily of the valley accord, mimosa, olive absolute, white pepper, coleus root
Base Notes: Aged Thai oud, Cambodian oud, Vietnamese oud, orris root, costus root, flouve absolute, cypriol, vanilla, spikenard, sandalwood absolute, benzoin, musk
Chéngmén limited edition giclée print on Arches paper, 11 x 15 inches, edition of 25.
Signed by artist John Biebel
Chéngmén is a limited edition of 75 perfumes, 50ml each ($250 USD), with an accompanying brochure. A limited edition, signed giclée print designed by John Biebel is also available ($50 USD).