Brooklyn Perfumers - Therapeutate/Rodney Hughes

Rodney Hughes of Therapeutate is a Brooklyn fine artist and natural perfumer, using fully natural plant essences in botanical alcohol and distilled water.  He has been very busy,  attentively calibrating a number of aromatic experiences that are warm, lush, rich, deep deep deep, and of such luxuriousness as to enter the territory of opulence.

He embroiders the details of his perfumes' top notes with jasmine, fine citruses, reiki energy, crystals and gemstones, prayers and invocations, and as you can tell from that recital, his own spirituality is highly invested in his perfumes' material essences and compositions.  This proves to be a point of view that honors the body and the sensual world as expressions of beauty that are both real and divine.

He is the perfumer behind Royal Water, which was my favorite (and in the top three favorites of all the many patch test bunnies) of the thirteen blind-tested patchouli perfumes of this past 2011 Summer of Patchouli Love. 

HD Extreme is sweet citrus, pepper, rose, geranium, spikenard, labdanum and ylang-ylang.  The mystery of the labdanum wends its way through the geranium and rose up into the top notes, yet still each element retains individuality.  There is an energetic harmony inspired by music and a development inspired by the narrative of film, as he references Miles Davis and Louis Malle. The tang of citrus is balanced by the subtle smart of pepper, the smooth rose contrasted by acrid geranium, the dry herbal earthiness of spikenard and labdanum by the moist floral ylang-ylang.  An enveloping warmth unfolds into the impression of a scented soft suede, perhaps a gloved hand holding an unlit cigar of sweet blond tobacco.

AK Extreme has an orange citrus accord paired with woods, and a smoky center, so it is both light in that it begins with the brightness of true orange and goes deep, especially as thrown into a shadowed relief by the woods' darker tones.  The perfume is aged to bring out all the nuances of the notes.  The citrus beginning holds for much longer than most, finally burning down to the woods with an autumnal  tone of burning leaves in the distance.

Chakra 2 opens with jasmine over blood orange on a base of sustainable sandalwood, and includes the tang of ginger, and again has that smoky heart wafting through it all. This smoke is the pale grey soft kind, that of burning powdered precious wood, while the sweet fragrant strength of the jasmine is maintained throughout the life of the experience.

There is good longevity in these fully natural perfumes, which is not easy to achieve without the heavy use of certain materials that tend to overwhelm others, in the resin and balsam end of the aroma spectrum. These are in the perfumes, but they are well calibrated so that the other notes show themselves with strength and delicacy too.

Rodney, in line with the name of his perfumes, has opened Institut Therapeutate in Brooklyn, with some other practitioners, offering reiki, yoga, massage, instruction in the composition of natural perfume, and spiritual mentoring. Many in the fashion and art worlds have embraced the regular practice of yoga, reiki and such other alternative means to balance the stress and demands of modern work and life. But don't think this means these perfumes are the product of an aromatherapy framework (this is not aromatherapy, though the natural elements in the perfumes will retain their beneficial nature).

Hughes did a good stiff stint in the fashion world and his fine art history background and training at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn shaped a sophisticated worldly and historical awareness. He practices the art of beauty through perfume to induce a sense harmonious balance and luxurious calm for the wearer. In this modern world with its stresses and distractions we need all that we can find that might be beneficial to the wearer in facing it every day.  Therapeutate Parfums shows  both the love of beautiful natural aromatic materials and the inspiration of music, film and the other arts in presenting perfumes to us.

There are a number of other fascinating perfumes in the line, and I intend to revisit them again on this site, because there is much more to explore.  

There are sample sets available online at the Therapeutate site and I encourage you to visit the Institut Therapeutate site online.  Make sure you have your audio on for the delightful piano piece that opens with it (Bob Acri - Sleep Away).

Above photos of Rodney Hughes and smoke from the Therapeutate site.
I received samples from Theapeutate.  This opinion is my own and not solicited or compensated.

Pandora - DSH

Pandora is a perfume of almost entirely botanical elements, with approximately 2.5% man-made notes of aldehyde and ozone, which fix, uplift and diffuse all the fragile botanical essences without taking away any of the gentleness and calm of their wholesome nature.

The note list is as follows:

Top: ruby fruits (botanical accord), bergamot, aldehyde, spice notes, ozone, violet leaf absolute,
davana, cassis bid, green and pink pepper
Heart: rose de mai absolute, juhi jasmine, linden blossom absolute, yerba maté absolute,
cabreuva wood, orris co2, green tea absolute
Base: mousse de saxe accord (botanical) , cyperus, fossilized amber absolute, ambergris tincture,
patchouli co2, vetiver co2, muhuhu, australian sandalwood, tonka bean absolute, oakmoss green,
vanilla absolute.

The result is a subtle warm essence that is a comfort scent for me, a talisman or amulet to hold on the skin against stress and strife.  When so much else in the world around may be chaotic, even anxiety provoking or demanding, bold, large and insistent, Pandora is a reminder of the quietly benevolent, soothing and calm side of Nature.  This gentle aromatic green liquid could provide an olfactory form of balance, like a port in the storm.  I believe  the soft mousse de saxe base provides the warmth that suffuses itself through the floral and green pleasantness to make a subtle aura of calm serenity.

If Alice drank this she would return to normal size, not too big, not too small. but back on earth as a normal child again in a safe place that made sense. 

DSH has a big range of perfume styles, and many of her perfumes are dramatic, bold and surprising straight out of the gate.  Pandora is part of the DSH fragrance wardrobe that is perfect for times when recovering from stress or even recuperating from the shock of an accident or illness.   Or perhaps for representing soothing calm peace and stability as a personal olfactory signature to signal your own good intentions.

The scent reminds me most of smoothness, like the smooth skin and hair of youth, while also representing the wisdom of balance.

This would be a perfect perfume for a woman with a young child, or a Zen or Yoga practitioner, as an aid to focus on the present moment and yourself within it.  It does not overwhelm you or turn you into anyone else more dangerous or glamorous or shocking. What it does for me is work to enhance an inner state of soft pleasant balance, which is far more than anyone could reasonably dare to ask of a perfume.

There are a number of other writers with a great diversity of opinion on this perfume,  so please visit them at the following sites, their posts will be up today:

• EauMG
• ScentHive
• Eyeliner on a Cat
• Perfume Pharmer
• Escentual Alchemy
• Oh, True Apothecary
• ThisBlogReallyStinks
• Dawn's blog: DSH Notebook       
• Scentual Soundtracks

If you wish to participate in a draw for a 3ml sample of Pandora, please do say so in a comment, and I will announce the winner on September 19th both here and on FB.

Above top image of Pandora by Redon, a frequent inspiration for DSH.
Second image Liebowitz/Ford image of Alice in Wonderland Drink Me.
Third image from Under the Lotus, a haiku/poetry site, please visit for another hit of serenity.
Sample and giveaway provided by DSH. 
This piece is non commercial and not a paid promotion.

ISA is the winner of the draw -- Congratulations!    Thank you all for participating.

Scent Memories

Every child creates a repertoire of their favorite smells, usually closely associated with a loved being, either their own family members or animals. These are significant experiences because they are the first experiences, perhaps something as simple as going to the beach and lying in the sun inhaling the freshest air with the tang of salt in it and the sunlight refreshing everyone’s skin and the sense of expansion of time and bodily pleasure.

Important scent memories are laid down in the mind and soul in many ways. The scent of favorite foods or their preparation, the biting into an apple or plum, or sharing such an the experience with a loved one, who explains to you how they love a particular flavor and scent, so the child grows to love it too. 

The sense of experiencing everything fully and therefore expanding time makes childhood memories the vast repository of emotions and scent associations. I know those two are closely related, since the olfactory nerve reaches to the brain straight into the amylgada,  the seat of  emotion, so the joining of the two makes for indelible memories.

It goes to show a  wide range of experience,  how many scents we may become attached to, from vanilla to coffee to all the wood and tree scents, the smells of cloth and paper, flowers and earth, or any expansive personal experience of the material world. It proves an openness to these simple experiences in their full beauty  in childhood.

That quality is sometimes recaptured in adult life and new scent memories are laid down deep in our selves through new experiences of romance and joining with another persona. Even the tone and smell of someone’s skin will become imprinted on us through the endorphins of love, as it was when we were very young and much more open to loves of all kinds. 

I know that deep concentration or simply focus of attention, a meditative quality that notices the nuances also builds experiences that are associated with their characteristic scent. Then their recurrence will reconnect me emotionally to that time and place.

Travel that brings unfamiliar and wider experiences, often during a time away from work, brings out the sense of play and timelessness that recreates a child like openness, will incorporate the fragrances of experience into the psyche, without effort or thought. The most important things are wedded to our minds and emotions with a scent to identify them more often than not.

Sometimes what gets interesting is when these personally iconic scents become incorporated into accords or perfumes that turn and move us to appreciate them from other directions. Fresh scent experiences that both are grounded in the familiar deep affinities and then layer upon layer, build up over time, reaching out to the new around this central core of an important scent, one that is important to ourselves. It’s like music that uses the notes and styles we are most familiar with and love and then takes them into new territories.

This freshness of experience that can deeply affect us is also similar to when people discovered new fragrant plants and food substances on the great voyages of exploration in the past.  This is similar to how we may sometimes venture out of our habits to experience something new which incorporates something old and deep too. Then we can appreciate the new as we once did when we were new ourselves. 

I hope to cultivate that way of being both fresh to experience and associate fragrance to important memories, binding the scent signatures they bear into my mind and emotions more tightly. 

As a personal example, I think of the concept of musk. As I had understood it, before I was familiar with it as a note in perfume composition, musk was something that was a little sweaty, even a little dirty, an animal unwashed scent that was supposed to signify sexuality or be associated with strong and overtly aggressive wildness. 

Now after exposure to various kinds of musks both natural and synthetic, I associate it simply with skin. Everyone’s skin has a scent, and some fortunate people have strongly appealing skin scents. Clean skin tends to have an appealing scent that is sheer but affects the perfumes on it nonetheless. 

Musk itself has many shades and goes from an almost salty tanginess with an undertone of clean skin to an acrid civet tone to a smooth ambrette silkiness of something like fine thick brushed hair of a child, and many others in-between and beyond. There are so many shades of natural musk, which is why there are many kinds of chemical musk now too, used in practically everything. It fascinates me that musk has the quality of amplifying all other scents. 

I have read that a glass that had contained orange juice, even after thorough washing in hot water will bloom out into a strong orange odor if a speck of musk is introduced into the glass. So this may be why own own and other’s musky skin quality has so much significance for us as a smell. Even people who shower with lots of hot water every day have this characteristic scent which seems to replace itself every day, regardless of how thoroughly we attempt to remove it and render ourselves scentless with bathing.

It interests and frightens me a little that humans have such a strong smell. An unwashed human smells much more rank than any animal in the wild, with a throw of more than 20 feet all around. I suspect that’s part of the reason why dogs became attracted to us in the first place, they love strong and dense smells of all kinds and nothing has a stronger smell than a human in a natural state without much access to soap and water. So that’s a possible beneficial effect, it may have brought the dogs to love us. 

In any case, as we all know this, we seek out bathing and water and cleansing rituals, making this one of the great human pleasures. Grooming and the application of replenishing moisturizing substances that are scented after washing and surrounding ourselves with as many appealing scented materials as we can appears to be a universal pleasure. It can only get more pleasing once a sensibility for scents has been deliberately developed. 

 I think one of my earliest sense memories was noticing how sunlight on anything intensified it, especially enhancing  the  color and scent of anything in in its rays.  I think that universal and subtle quality can be felt in certain perfumes.  I find this particular deep sense memory works itself out in a number of perfumes in many ways. 

Deliberately developing scent memories will amplify the beauty and pleasures of the world, as simple or luxurious it may be, in memory of the past or experience of the transitory present, and is well worth attention and dedication.

This is an excerpt from a book I am working on about my experience of perfume in all its glories.

Above images:  Klimt's Mother and Child, a detail from The Three Ages of Woman, and

Monet's Water Lily Pond with Bright Setting Sun