About Aftelier Sepia, Mandy Aftel wrote, “In creating this perfume, one of the things that I especially like (yet also find especially difficult) is trying to translate an emotionally visual experience into an equally emotional perfume experience.”
This statement might lead you to think Sepia is an abstract fragrance without a figurative anchor, but that’s not true. But it’s also not true that Sepia is a Demeter-like recreation of an existing odor — in this case, the scent of the California ghost towns that inspired Sepia. Instead, Sepia is an unusual blend of mood and reality, a fragrance that evokes a definite physical presence as well as the aura surrounding it…