I selected Bee for reasons as hedonistic as they are objective - it is a pleasure that works the mind, body, and the imagination. Honey notes are seldom foregrounded in perfumery, and this is an excellent study. When I wear Bee, the honey note rapidly transforms into a lacquer that coats all of its ingredients in a glorious veneer. I begin to smell its texture - I feel myself move into its viscosity - florals, resins, and smoke transformed by its touch: they become an ambrosia. Bee is glorious. It is sunny and radiant and yet it is also inwards and concentrated. Musk Deer is a triumph that manages to evoke animalic musk as much as it does vegetal musk - my penchant for atmospheric and fruity ambrette seed satisfied. Its focus is precise and maintained through the lifetime of wear. Cardamom enters the scene, lending a crystalline and resinous quality, rose and jasmine sambac add fleshiness and softness, and cedar, amber, oud, and patchouli ground. Like Bee’s honey note, the musk here infuses into the total surface of this fragrance, unfurling with wear.
Harvest Mouse is a delightful surprise, replete with warm malty grains, chamomile, and a CO2 extracted beer note. More than an olfactory curiosity, it is a brilliant scent that celebrates autumnal flavours and smells. It is, indeed, a little cottagecore. These yeasty, estery, bready-like fragrances all too often descend into cloying sweetness or tackiness, and Harvest Mouse retains its integrity and sophistication. It is gourmand here and there, and it is done right. Rhinoceros turns the warm into the arid, celebrating exquisite tobacco absolute as it evokes a sunburnt earth where spicy and dry aromas mingle in the dust. With a whiff of Rhino, you can feel the intensity of solar waves radiating off its surface, cooling slightly in the low dusky sunlight, mixing with the delights of whisky, coffee, rum, patchouli, oud and incense. It is intense but balanced. Whilst Harvest Mouse imagines bales of wheat roasting in the sunlight, Rhino turns to a fantasy of withered sheafs of golden tobacco leaf.
Elephant moistens this earth as it takes us to a rainforest scene. My fascination with this scent is more textural than it is thematic, technical than it is intuitive - I love the manner Elephant unfolds, its green aspects are staggered and morph along the axis of its development. An initial sharpness rapidly smooths into the dizzyingly deep depth of a profound sandalwood accord, met with a dark chocolate note that adds even further richness to the scent. I get lost in this rainforest, and before anything else I can hear the mighty elephants crunching down on tree leaves, earth, coconuts, and white petalled flowers. This is a delightful woody green fragrance.
Finally, Dodo (Jackfruit) respects a traditional aromatic fougere format dominated with lavender and tonka bean. It softens the initial impact and sharpness of the original Dodo fragrance, maintaining a tropical counterpoint that shines onto this aromatic structure. This bird dashes through an earth strewn with flowers, fruits, and herbs. This warm earth is complex with notes of iris root, vetiver, turmeric, patchouli, and labdanum – roots, shrubs, and warmth. An interesting harmony, this is exactly how a flanker should be.
