Aftelier Wildflowers & Memento

V&A Flemish Tapestry 15th Century

Wildflowers solid perfume by Aftelier at first impression gives me a rare combination of mint and earth, and a tang of citrus.  In a few minutes the opposites resolve themselves into a honeyed hay that triggers a nostalgia for Summer, because it presents me with the exact sense memory of all the complicated scents around when everything is in full growth all at once.  That sense of expansiveness is something you can recognize in almost a primal way. I find putting this perfume on in the dead of winter, especially with tonight being the Winter Solstice with a rare red moon eclipse, is like a lifeline to the heart of earth's vitality.  It reminds me of the olfactory equivalent of the mille fleurs backgrounds of the Unicorn Tapestries  or a Persian carpet with small abstracted flower details.  It is listed on the Aftelier site as an Amber Oriental.

This is a perfectly organic perfume, and as such needs to be given room and space to be experienced in its own way.  Because it is so subtle and ephemeral, I like to concentrate on this perfume after taking a little space and time away from others so as to get the full effect.  Strong contrasts do not work in the favor of such delicate beauty. 

This experience of a sense of wide and spacious air filled with emerging myriad of tiny floral buds is so gorgeous that the special conditions required by such delicacy, the quiet and thoughtfulness to get the full effect is well worth-while, and even one of the benefits of this style of fragrance. 

Aftelier solid perfumes come in an array of sterling silver cases and compacts from minimal to ornate, which have a feel and weight to them similar to antique watch cases or cosmetic compacts brimming with poetic aromas.  The prices vary widely, but a gateway experience of a sample may well serve to begin a love affair.

Memento is a liquid counter-balance to Wildflowers, as it contains the warming spices associated with winter holidays, such as smoky cinnamon and antique clove and nutmeg with blood orange, over a rose and jasmine heart and a base of tonka bean and vanilla.  This kind of perfume can provide an aromatic fire to stay warm with on these cold and dark days.  On me the dry down is a warm spiced liquor that becomes abstract enough to not be so easily identifiable as to each of the notes but rather becomes an air of honey spiked with penetrating aromatics.

The Aftelier site is a rich resource of beautiful descriptions and categories across a wide range of
perfumes in many different guises and forms. The vintage photos of perfume makers in Grasse are very touching and trigger daydreams of an alternate life in the open fields.

Re-reading Essence and Alchemy is a great pleasure.   It's the book that had a big influence on getting me started down this fragrance road in the first place, and reading it again now is an even richer and more dimensional experience than the first time, especially since having more direct experience of the materials and the essences described.

Above images from the Aftelier site.