Odeur de Lune: moon smell

Everything they say about this place is true: Aedes de Venustas on Christopher Street is an aesthetically foreign, old-world paradise for the senses. As I was told I must, I walked East on the north side of the street toward Greenwich Ave., admiring the cobbles and lettering on signs, buzzed at number 9, and stepped inside. It is carpeted. Crystal bottles are locked behind glass. The drapes are heavy, the lighting low, atmosphere: Rose. The men behind the counter are bronzed, blonde, and effortlessly tasteful. When the trio of French customers and their manicured pets exit, Robin turns her attention to me: Do you know what you like?

First thought: Dark forest, with mushrooms and leaves. The result: She leads me over to the Diptyque collection (already, I am excited) and sprays a scent strip with the 1988 release Eau D’Elide. I love it: lavender and moss and (perhaps I am only imagining this) out of season violets under the brown debris of a deciduous fall, dry on the surface, damp underneath. The next 30 minutes are a whirl; I lose track of the scent strips somewhere between Serge Lutens and Montale filling my lungs with long, slow inhalations and trying to pair words with each inflected sensation. Some of them are events in space and time (first haying in Idaho), some of them are tagged more loosely in memory (a very certain kind of bonbon I had in Gothenburg as a child–no it isn’t the anise), and others are coded for truly weird synesthetic associations: heat, moisture, dry and still. My sniffing partner loves Diptyque’s Eau de Lierre: Ivy. I ask her where she is from: California. And yes, they had it in the back yard.

As I am about to leave, sample in hand, Robin says, “Well since you’re here…” To my left, by the door, is a table with candles in array. I’ve read about this Cire Trudon, true to their process those French. The long-awaited candles have just come in, and my guide loves to show them with their hand-scripted labels, displayed on old wood. Twelve interpretations, without patience for prettiness. Revolution is bread and gunsmoke, Carmelite is convent stone, DADA is expansive tea meant to disorient. And finally, this one, she tells me, is based on chemical analyses from NASA. Lift the glass bell; smell the moon.

Oudh

Life in the natural world is combat: Organization willing itself to be for a small moment in the landscape of eternity, chaos reclaiming it. Deep in the wet tropics of Asia, the battle rages on with new allies, new enemies, plot-twists, evolving complexes. Since before human history, the regal Aquilaria has had to fight for its life against a particularly malicious threat: Phialophora parasitica. Having survived the sapling years by luck, evading grazing predators, reaching out of the undergrowth for a share of sun, the Aquilaria must, in its mature years, fend off the fungus that attacks from within.

The effects of Phialophora parasitica are anthropomorphically gruesome, but the tree’s response is no less than miraculous. To ward off this fungal decay, Aquilaria produces a precious aromatic resin. Tragically, the amber panacea is only enough to slow the infection’s progress; once Phialophora has taken its hold, the tree will die. But the resin–sometimes formed in the tree over hundreds of years–remains in the heartwood, is very valuable (c. $50,000 per kilo), is thought to have myriad medicinal qualities, and most importantly smells, in the words of others, honey, ambergris, earth, woodnotes, fresh tobacco, jasmine, cream. It is a fragrance that is eccentric, acquired, sophisticated. Or so I have heard. Few city-dwelling Westerners have had the pleasure of experiencing pure aromatic oudh. Instead, we must sniff it out in composition: take a fragrance and learn to parse out oudh’s singular qualities juxtaposed against kumquat, leather, spices, rose.

For a sniff tutorial in oudh, I recommend trying Arabian-inspired French perfume house Montale’s Aoud collection. Fragrances range from desert market to ionized atmosphere, with oudh at the heart of all. According to some afficionados, the smell of oudh takes a full 12 hours to ripen on the skin and can linger for days; on clothes and textiles it can last for months. Alas, to know oudh, allow time.