Happy Friday and happy National Daiquiri Day! Birthdays: Edgar Degas, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Brian May. Our community project for today: wear a fragrance with a mint note. Extra points if mint is in the name!
What fragrance did you pick? As always, do chime in with your scent of the day even if you’re not participating in the community project.
I’m in Imaginary Authors Saint Julep…
I recently purchased a few small plants to create a summer “container garden” — basil, dill, peppermint. I’ve done this before, although not last summer or the year before (I must have had something else on my mind?) and I’m looking forward to having a supply of fresh-picked herbs again. And, of course, there’s the smell factor. The mint plant, in particular, had me burying my nose in its leaves on the walk home.
Right around the same time, I was happy to hear that the first release from Nomenclature’s new Modern Eclectics collection is Minted, an “aromatic woody scent” with notes of mint, maté, jasmine, papyrus, Atlas cedar, violet, lemongrass, bergamot and brown sugar for “the fragrance equivalent of a deep breath.” This collection is playful, but in a different way from the original Nomenclature collection, with its aroma-chemical “molecule” inspirations and its lab flask bottles: the Modern Eclectics presentation includes collages by visual artist Rafael Santiago as well as short, whimsical poems, and the descriptions of its scents refer to nature, to flavors, even to internet culture. Minted (created for Nomenclature by perfumer Jérôme Epinette) takes “Moroccan mint tea on ice” as one reference point, but also plays with multiple readings of “mint” as taste, as currency (hence the dollar sign in its visuals) and as the condition of newness…
The Slumberhouse website describes Grev as “a transparent metallic/herbal accord of star anise, crisp apple peel, spearmint leaf, ocean pine and bergamot twisted into hollowed tunnels padded in turquoise hues, dusted in sweet mossy mineral powder and blanketed with copaiba resin and sandalwood oil.” I describe Grev as a minty shiv straight from the freezer.
Grev is one of the four fragrances Slumberhouse issued when the perfume house debuted in 2011. A generous splash from my sample tube gives green apple for a split second before mentholated mint and pine trees obliterate it. After ten minutes, Grev relaxes and becomes more comfortable to wear…
If I’d been presented with Diptyque’s new Eau de Minthé* in an unmarked vial, after the first sniff I’d have bet it was a vintage fougère perfume from the 1960s or 1970s. Eau de Minthé is hairy from eyebrows to toes, and brimming with testosterone.
Eau de Minthé goes on with a blast of bergamot mixing with peppery greens (geranium leaf is noticeable, too). As Eau de Minthé skids into mid-development I get scented hints of rose water, green tea(?), “chewing-gum” spearmint and Life Savers® wintergreen candy…
On the outskirts of Clarksdale, Mississippi, at the end of a secluded dirt road sat a small ramshackle church. It was not a place of worship but rather where many went to seek refuge during impoverished times. […] It was a distinctly secular place where locals who knew where to find it could share moonshine, socialize, and dance their troubles away. They called their ramshackle juke joint Saint Julep and the oral histories compiled within paint a picture of that magical place where “the smiles was always free and salvation had the distinct smell of sweet mint.”
That’s presumably the imaginary blurb from the imaginary back cover of the imaginary book that inspired Saint Julep, the latest fragrance from indie brand Imaginary Authors. The notes — sweet mint, tangerine, Southern magnolia, bourbon, grisalva (amber molecule), sugarcube and crushed ice — are an obvious nod to the mint julep, and it’s hard to believe, but I’ve never tasted one. Since I assumed it was something heavy and dark and sweet, I likewise expected Saint Julep to be heavy and dark and sweet.
Wrong again. Never judge a book by its cover…