New Work and Autumn Arrives

I was fortunate to spend a few days with JK de Lapp (perfumer, Chinese medicine doctor and perfume source material expert) and some oud enthusiasts at a kind of retreat in the deep woods in Georgia recently. The exposure to so much raw material, from ambergris to palo santo, to (of course) agarwood / oud was so refreshing. Many friendly faces were there to share in this event. I’ve sometimes seen oud as “beautiful but somewhat unobtainable” as some of the best ouds are so far out of our reach cost-wise, but even enjoying the burning smell of a sliver of oud can be an amazing experience. In short, it was a creative boon after months and months of isolation.

Poster design for Horla Eau de Parfum.

I have also (somewhat quietly) released the latest perfume, Horla. It’s an exciting event, though, because I feel that this work is markedly different from the others so far - maybe reaching into new perfume territory for January Scent Project. It also began to develop a more distinct theme than some of the others, weaving itself around a specific work of fiction (Guy du Maupassant’s story Le Horla from 1887.) Although the short story and the perfume are not direct depictions back-and-forth, they became like a haze of past and present, and reminded me often of the surreal world we’ve been living in during COVID-19, sometimes traveling back and forth between studio and home, seeing very few people and being in a kind of sensory bubble. The main character of du Maupassant’s “Horla” has a similar relationship with a boat that is moored out in the harbor near his home in France. I started to feel the presence of this fragrance hovering around like the boat, The Horla and it becomes an obsession to our narrator. We can become similarly obsessed, I believe.

I’m glad to present it to the public and some thoughts from the outside world are trickling in again. It’s good to release, connect, and create that loop of communication.

I have plans to release yet another perfume before the end of the year - I will endeavor to do so. There has been such a bounty of fragrance releases all over the world this autumn - have we all waited to see if we emerged from the seclusion ok? Time will tell, of course, but the isolation gave way to that feeling you get when you’ve studied and studied and then finally passed an exam. I have a few more exams to take before the end of the year, but I believe I’ll pass them as well - I’ve had abundant time to prepare.

Enjoy the encroaching Fall / Autumn season and its incredible sensory delights. More info to come by email very soon. ~ John

Words With Lucy Raubertas of Indie Perfumes

Last week I spoke for well over an hour with Lucy Raubertas, writer, artisan, perfume expert, and connoisseur of all things cultural. She is also a friend, so this was a great opportunity to catch up. She put together a blog post on the new perfumes that was so insightful, it left me thinking that she'd found more to what I'd been making than I'd even considered myself. As she said so well later about the writing process, "I like to bring something to the table." It's very important to me, as a reader, to see this as well. What does someone else think, feel, interpret?

Her essay about Selperniku, Eiderantler, and Smolderose was so engrossing, vivid, and drew together threads into a kind of Northern mossy tapestry so well suited to the scents. You can read her thoughts here at her blog, Indie Perfumes.

What is particularly nice about this experience is that Lucy is one of the first people to smell the very first version of the very first Smolderose, back in 2015 when I had poked around with alternate versions of the scent for many months. We all agree at that time that it needed work, so it was back to the drawing board, but armed with a lot of important feedback. It's a joy to come full circle with Lucy and hear her thoughts once again.