I can rarely resist a New York reference in a fragrance or a beauty product. Charenton Macerations is a new independent fragrance line created by Douglas Bender, a New York resident who has worked in various aspects of the fragrance industry, and its first scent is inspired by an old and storied New York location: Christopher Street, one of the best-known by-ways of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Christopher Street was developed in collaboration with perfumer Ralf Schwieger. Its composition includes top notes of alcoholic lime, bergamot, bitter orange, leather and tobacco; mid-notes of cinnamon, clove bud, “Dance on Skin,” orange blossom and Poet Carnation; and a dry down of incense, moss, musk, myrrh and patchouli.
As the Charenton Macerations website mentions, Christopher Street has been “home to merchants and misfits, Beatniks and Bohemians, dissidents and protesters” over its three centuries of existence. It evolved from colonial farmland into a site of shipping and trade, a crucible of modern art and literature, an epicenter of the sexual revolution, and a key location in the gay liberation movement. Although many of its long-loved bookstores and cafés are now closed, a few reminders of its history still stand, all with their own distinct olfactory profiles…