Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.
Their perfumes have names like "Bengal", "Magus", "Dracul", "Nosferatu", and "To Autumn". They use notes like dried leaves and grave dirt. How could you not want these perfumes right away? How could you not be inspired by them?
Thanks to swapping (and a very generous person that was willing to swap with me and give me lots for...well, not much...) we've developed quite a collection of their little samples, which they call "Imps". They've only sharpened my lust for more of their perfume oils, and above all, they've driven me to whole new levels of inspiration. Lindsay and I constantly think of creative ways to layer these perfumes with each other, or less commonly, with our commercial perfumes. When I open our little wooden box of imps, I don't see a bunch of vials with white labels. I see color. I see art. I see breathtaking beauty that drags all my senses in along with my nose.
That's why commercial perfume is coming to mean less and less to me. I used to love to buy commercial perfume when I could, to analyze them, to try them on. But after BPAL, I've learned what real inspiration is. And commercial perfumes are coming to smell more and more fake to me, and I'm liking fewer and fewer of them all the time. Chanel Chance Eau Tendre is still a classy, drop-dead gorgeous fragrance that I still desperately want to own a bottle of, and I still cherish my D&G Anthology #3. But other than that...my enthusiasm for commercial perfume has pretty well dried up.
Department stores market the same kinds of fragrances year after year...fruity florals with a hint of mature femininity, like a shelf full of fake women in their late thirties, all working the same kind of office job. The only difference in flavor is the fact that they work at different companies.
Yes, my olfactory sensibilities have matured dramatically. Does that surprise you?
Three months ago, I wasn't truly aware that there were beautifully-made perfumes that I could put on, like different places or times. I wasn't aware that, if I felt like it, I could smell like a Bengalese spice market or like the wine-sloshed great hall of a Norman castle. I wasn't aware I could smell like a Himalayan shrine to Buddha or the study of a medieval alchemist. A forest clearing or a place from a H.P. Lovecraft story. A garden in feudal Europe or a garden in feudal Japan.
Then I woke up to the revelation that popular perfume has a lack of imagination befitting a corporate, consumerist culture like ours. You might get inspired, really inspired, to make a beautiful piece of perfume art. But just like in music, the only art they're gonna pay you for is the art they can market. And with perfume, they're often marketing it to people without all that much imagination. And they don't even put your name on the front. Some fake actress or pop star signs her name on it and takes the credit.
Talk about adding insult to injury!
I'm getting the sense that having this disappointing revelation was necessary, somehow. And more and more talented perfumers over the last ten years or so have been having it, too. These new artists and their beautiful perfumes are pushing against mainstream consciousness. It's only a matter of time till they break through, and the perfume industry gets turned on its head. Fake, cloying celebrity fragrances will be forgotten in favor of perfume art with depth, realism, and genuine simplicity.
The time will come, I think. :)
