Geisha Violet and Geisha Rouge – Aroma M

I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to get to know Maria McElroy; the perfumer of Aroma M a bit, and what I have observed is her primary dedication to beauty.  She is very conscious of her own responsibility for creating beauty in her own life and therefore everyone else’s too, every day.  It’s an inspiring clarity of purpose.   

The  back story is that after a Masters in Fine Arts, she formally studied aromatherapy in Australia, and then very drawn to Japanese culture she moved and lived there for seven years.  While learning Japanese and teaching English, she studied flower arranging, incense ceremony and the tea ceremony.  These experiences all came together on her return to the U.S. to inspire a perfume line based on the aesthetics personified by the persona of the Geisha.  There are so many subtleties to the traditional Geisha’s body of cultural and aesthetic store of knowledge, and Aroma M translates some of this for us as embodied in perfume. 

The line is a collection of  variations on this theme, as identified by colors, from Noire to Blanche to Rouge to Violet, Pink, Green and others, including variations on the theme of green tea and other tastes; appropriately so since taste is so close to the olfactory sense.  I have written about Geisha Noire and Geisha O-Cha (early Spring green tea) before.  The ones I know are all in the perfume oil versions.

Maria suggested I try Geisha Violet with the intuition it would be suited to my tastes, and it truly is.  It has a strong green opening filled with freshness that opens out into cut green stems in water, then more of the greenness of cut grass in summer and a subtle hint of the sweetness of violets deep within mown grasses.  There is something about this combination of effects that grabs and moves me by its headlong sense of direction towards an essence of happiness and a physical sense of well-being.  It’s reliably true that certain olfactory experiences will always directly reach back into your own psychology to cut through whatever may be happening on the surface of your life straight to a peaceful center.  This one for me reaches into a primal sense memory of the energy of Spring and I suspect is calling on the forces of the right half of the brain hemisphere.

 A partial note list includes accords of lilac, violet, bitter chocolate and Japanese lotus.  I think the chocolate while not recognizable as such for me, is modifying the sweetness of the floral accords in such a way as to smooth them, shading their brightness.  I suspect the Japanese lotus is watering everything with a rain-like liquidity that imparts something like a thick crystal pane that serves to magnify the beauty of the natural world for me.  The dry down is slow and satisfyingly tenacious, with a hold close to the skin.  This one is good for those of us who like to wear perfume to work or for casual social times because it doesn’t throw a wide sillage, and what it does comes off from a distance as a sense of freshness.

 Geisha Rouge at first struck me as so powerful I used it a pin drop at a time, and that tiny drop emanated a cinnamon and clove spiciness with a wide throw.  Then I realized that a wider spread on the skin brought out the complexity and beauty of the composition more fully. Clove and cinnamon are dominant but Tonka bean, sandalwood, vanilla and anise marry the vivacious liveliness of something like a stick of cinnamon to a carnation and the dark and soothing narcotic effect of the smooth base notes.  On a wider evaporative surface with the skin’s own scent coming through it gives me the impression of an incense drifting around the body like vapor or smoke.  Rouge has that fire-y beginning as bespeaks the red of its name but then becomes a subtle incense that is complicated and tenacious.  The initial sillage is strong, but the dry down pulls back in and there is a soft darkness and depth that invites contemplation.  

Both of these perfumes are distinctive and strong enough to take you out of yourself and deliver you to a shore that is exotic, luxurious and different enough to engage and heighten your perceptions and sense memories.  Aroma M is translating another culture’s traditions of beauty a subtle increment at a time with this range of perfumes on the themes of Japanese beauty culture.  These two are on the opposite ends of the sensory spectrum and there are others in the line that capture the many variations in between and around them.  I expect there will be more to come in this ongoing project that will enlighten and beautify and marry the sensory traditions of the traditional Far East and the contemporary West.

Image above from a Comix forum site, scroll down for more covers of Les Chroniques de Sillage; a stylish and dark Western view of the Japanese aesthetic.

Aroma M website and information for the full line and ordering.