Silence the Sea is one of the most intriguing fragrances that I’ve ever come across. Christophe Laudamiel, working together with the Strangelove NYC brand owner Elizabeth Gaynes and creative director Helena Christensen weaves a creation that features pure ambergris with an alluring effect, addictive and deeply primal.
This is not a marine-aquatic fragrance, and yet it speaks about oceans and seas in volumes!
The Black Knight by Francesca Bianchi greets you with the power of a fully equipped, light, and swift battle horse in a full gallop through a fresh and green field of vetiver: its muscles are moving in a tense way, hoofs picking up and throwing pieces of dry earth in the air behind it.
And yet, there is hidden tenderness and fragility that makes him feel – so human.
My review of The Black Knight perfume was first published in Cafleurebon, and this is the version I edited in 2021.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peaceYou may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one –John Lennon, 1971
As simple as these words and piano melody may seem, this is a complex song.
The vision behind it historically runs much deeper, just as the vision behind the perfume Lost in Heaven does, although it presents itself as seemingly simple happiness & well-being providing a fragrance that makes you want to hug the whole world.
That part is true but there’s more to it, so much more. Francesca Bianchi-style more.
My Lost in Heaven review was first published in Cafleurebon, and this is the version edited in 2021.
Lotus Rising perfume review (Tanja Bochnig), first published in Cafleurebon.
“The lotus flower blooms most beautifully from the deepest and thickest mud“ – Buddhist Proverb
Lotus – a flower with unparalleled resilience, a symbol of life, death, and rebirth often tied to spirituality inspired Tanja Bochnig during gloomy days in 2020 to create a fragrance that would offer hope and strength, and point us in the direction of illumination.
My The Decameron Stories and Perfume article was first published in Cafleurebon, and this is the version I edited in 2021.
“And the plague gathered strength as it was transmitted from the sick to the healthy through normal intercourse, just as the fire catches on to any dry or greasy object placed too close to it.
Nor did it stop there: not only did the healthy incur the disease and with it the prevailing mortality by talking to or keeping company with the sick–they had only to touch the clothing or anything else that had come into contact with or been used by the sick and the plague evidently was passed to the one who handled those things.”
― Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron
On a cold day of Winter in Anno Domini 2021, approximately one horribilis year after The Virus started to spread rapidly all over the world – I am still in (partial) lockdown.
And I continue to read books, observe physical reality and Zeitgeist, and write about fragrances: this is my (edited) story about The Decameron and Perfume in Quarantine.