If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.

And thus ends A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Perfume Event.  Thanks again to everyone who thought, dreamed, alchemied, sniffed, or read about these perfumes, especially Amanda F., aka Absinthe Dragonfly, for organizing all of us.

And above all, thanks to Shakespeare, and all those who continue to teach and celebrate his works, for giving us so much to make merry from.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - The Scented Djinn Peaseblossom EdT

The Scented Djinn Peaseblossom EdT

Last but not least on my foray into scented takes on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is courtesy of Justine Crane, better known as The Scented Djinn, who sent me a lovely little sample of her contribution to this project, Peaseblossom EdT. The tiny scroll accompanying it read as follows:

"Peaseblossom, quiet fairy be, shyly collects dewdrops
to steep the petals which he
passes,
On his merry way through the sylvan woods
A sweet perfume to present to his
Golden Fairy Queen."

Composition: organic grain alcohol, wheatgrass tincture, oakmoss tincture, ambrette hydrosol, vintage benzoin resin, lavender mailette, clary sage absolute, carnation absolute, tonka bean tincture, vanilla bourbon CO2, rose gulab otto, dark Indonesian patchai ellai, tea rose otto, Mysore sandalwood, vetyver mitti, honey tincture, jasmine sambac absolute, rose geranium, vintage tolu balsam resin, rose otto, butyl butyrate (natural isolate; source ~ cassava melon).

I have a deep appreciation for this scent, conceptually, for a number of reasons. First of all, Peaseblossom is a minor character in the play, and attendant of Titania. Most of Peaseblossom’s action and lines on stage consist of interacting with and waiting on Bottom at the Queen’s direction. So it pleases me much to see that someone spent time thinking what a minor fairy in the Queen’s court might have smelled like, what a quiet fairy might do with their time.

I understand the draw to Titania, or to Oberon, or even to making a scent based on the flower whose nectar proves the vexation of the characters that fateful summer night. These are larger than life characters, magical objects. I give Justine a lot of credit for passing them over to find an aspect of the play usually unnoticed and under appreciated to make her own.

As to the scent: three cheers for a sweet floral, but not fruity, patchouli! How did she do it? It’s not overly green, and yet definitely a patchouli scent on me. It’s a gentle scent, possessing a playful quality I’m happy to see in a scent based on a fairy. Green and mossy at first, it quickly becomes sweeter, lavender and sage and vetyver providing a strong base for the dance of the floral notes.

A very pretty scent indeed, and fitting for a fairy fair. I hope that, in addition to the EdT, which I suspect is best experienced when applied by spraying wet, I am hoping for a pure parfum or solid version available as well.

To see more visit A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Perfume Event, running June 14-24, 2011.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - JoAnne Bassett Perfumes Night Queen

JoAnne Bassett Perfumes Night Queen (Reine de Nuit EdP)

"Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays.
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely.
Hey, that's me and I want you only."

Stop number three on our Shakespearean adventures is brought to you courtesy of JoAnne Bassett Perfumes. This is also a meditation on the Queen of Fae, Titania. Given the broad themes of the play, the interesting and various characters, even the play within the play, I have to say I’m surprised how many of the perfumers were drawn to a scented meditation of Titania. I think it speaks to how large she looms in the imagination of those who encounter the work.

The notes for Night Queen are “rhododendron, night queen, peru balsam, rosewood, damask rose oil, neroli, tuberose, vintage jasmine sambac, frankincense, yuzu, clove bud, tulsi, frankinsense noir, champa, vetiver, violet leaf and ylang ylang.”

Image by
Howard David Johnson

The initial impression is mossy but not minty, of pines but not firs, which have a strong presence in the woods here. This feels more like the pines of the Blue Ridge, the Appalachians. The open wears close to the skin, and it isn’t what I’d call aggressively green or earthy. There’s a little bit of a briny quality to it, as well, like a warm, wet ocean lies just beyond the edge of the trees and hangs heavy in the moist air.

About forty-five minutes in, the mossy greens and briny blues fall away and the scent becomes a sweet floral scent. I do get the clove, frankincense, and ylang-ylang strongly, but the interesting center of this seems to be the night queen. I love the idea of the scent for this play being centered on a night blooming flower, something that comes out to bring a sense of romance as day turns to darkness, much like the fae in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The loveliness is even more wonderful because it is so unexpected; I can hardly detect the scent that it will become at the beginning of Night Queen. Having never encountered the flower before, I'd describe it here as a sweet gently edible floral, and reminds me of a rich tea blend with a chamomile center. There’s more sillage here, which is great! I really liked this one came in strong, because it is so, so pretty. The only other scent can think of that this drydown reminds me of even a little bit is INeKE Evening Edged in Gold, but when I put them next to each other, I have to think the resemblance is mostly in my mental landscape.

When one holds the scent under the nose, it smells like one thing, the application is a second, but the majority of the wearable scent comes in as a completely surprising third act. The overall scent reminds me of the bloom of love. It grows from an earthy attraction to the polite engagement of first dates and early courtship until it becomes love affirmed and deeply requited, a lush and sensual emotional experience.

“Show a little faith.
There's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but, hey, you're alright,
Oh and that's alright with me…”

I don’t know that I’d identify this with scent with the Queen of Fae as I envision her. (Incidentally, I don’t know what I’m looking for in a scent for Titania; I can't think of any scent I know of that would fit, but my nose is loving all of these scents made in her image as different potential ways she could be played.) To me, Night Queen instead reminds me of the young, fresh faced lovers who play out their lost, confused love quadrangle throughout the majority of Shakespeare's comedy.

As for Midsummer, if this scent were made into a production of the play, I’d expect it to be set in the 1950s in the Appalachians and focus on the interplay of the teen love and angst the play could contain. Hermia, a pretty young blonde, refuses to have a romance arranged by her parents with Demetrius, who in my version is a star high school athlete and a bit of a player. Demetrius has won approval to date Hermia by working part-time in Hermia's father's garage after school and charming Hermia's mother with his nice family and nice manners.

Hermia, a straight-A student and very popular and pretty girl, prefers instead the love of Lysander, who is a hardworking student bound to inherit his dad's hardware store one day. Lysander has won Hermia's heart over the course of many months of Sundays spent helping out Hermia with the Sunday school class she teaches, where they spent time together in light of Hermia's father's strict rules that did not allow Hermia to date.

Hermia's preference for Lysander is also important to Helena, a pretty but slightly dingy cheerleader. Helena was hot and heavy with Demetrius before he decided Hermia made for a prettier picture come prom time. Helena still pines for Demetrius, and laments her lost love to Hermia over their brown paper lunch bags regularly. As Hermia and Lysander plan to make their escape to Lysander's aunt on the eve of Hermia's eighteenth birthday so they can get married before Hermia's parents can stop them, Helena hopes that by telling Demetrius of their plans, she can finally convince him to give up on his pursuit of Hermia and choose her instead.

Then they all head into the wooded mountains in classic American cars along dark old highways, getting lost and eventually finding themselves bewitched by the fae and the old magicks that have always lived among country folk in the American south, and still do even today.

While Hollywood is all obsessed with remaking everything old new again, someone should get on this. And the screenplay writers should be required to wear "Night Queen" and listen to Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" while they create the retelling. Because when I close my eyes and inhale this rich and wonderful perfume, I hear big engines and poodle skirt swishes and Bruce Springsteen playing as the scent glides through the open windows, playing at the hair of our young lovers, as they roar off into the night.

Well, now, I'm no hero, that's understood.
All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood.
With a chance to make it good somehow,
Hey what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair.
Well the night's bustin' open, these two lanes will take us anywhere.
We got one last chance to make it real
to trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back.
Heaven's waiting down on the tracks…”

To see more visit A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Perfume Event, running June 14-24, 2011.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Bellatrix Perfumes Titania

Bellatrix Perfumes Titania

The first Midsummer scent I bring you comes from the lovely Ankica Milic of Bellatrix Perfumes.

She provided me the following to reflect on as I sampled her scent, Titania:

Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I’ll gve thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.

Notes: Rosewood, Pink Pepper, Mentha peperita, Tuberose, Rose damascene abs., Neroli, Iris, Labdanum, Violet leaf, Orris butter, Sandal album, Angelica root, Ambrette, Oak moss, Patchouli.

What a lovely choice of words for an artistic meditation. I believe, on this passage alone, I could plan an entire lovely summer wedding. Titania’s woods are in many ways like love itself – once ensnared, it is a place one not only cannot leave, but does not wish to flee, for how sweet are its tender entrapments!

The scent, then, to me is less a mediation on the Queen of Fae herself, than on that blessed and magickal place that lives in our hearts, the haze of love that feels like the moment between sleeping and wakefulness. A drowsing dreamy state, where one might feel the gentle press of hands and gentler kiss of brow and cheek, and even in that unconsciousness, sigh for the happiness of it.

In that respect, Ankica has done her material a turn considerably more than fair. The scent is one that eyes closed and listening to Shakespeare’s words, might conjure in one’s mind images of the characters venturing into the woods that fateful night.

I cannot say that it is much like anything else I have tried, though I see some similarity to both strongly woody scents and some nerolis. The opening is full of pepper and menthe, which quickly retreats and folds strongly toward rosewood, oak moss, and patchouli. Violet leaf lurks, and rose as well. I give Ankica true credit for managing such a gentle patchouli. Usually it is a note so overwhelming I have to struggle to catch anything else. I do not get any iris, sadly, but I do not find it a loss here.

To give a sense of the scent beyond my own expression, let me give some other comparisons. It has some in common with Dana English Leather, but it less sharp featured and masculine than this cousin. Compared to Jo Malone Orange Blossom, Ankica's scent is less flowery and sweet and more of smooth wood, more inclined toward Fair Titania's hidden home than she herself. It is not so green as to share any relation to Roxana Illuminated Perfumes GreenWitch, though the Queen of Fae be both green and bewitching. It is very lovely, and makes a truly sweet scent for this project.

I hope Ankica will make it available when she chooses to launch her line. I’d like to own it. It fills a hole in my collection I did not know existed until I smelled the scent. And in this respect, it is quite like finding love when for love one seeks least.

That may be Titania and Oberon’s greatest trick here, and it is a good one.

To see more visit A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Perfume Event, running June 14-24, 2011.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - A Perfume Event begins tomorrow!

A couple of months ago, I received a lovely and flattering invitation to participate as a blogger and reviewer in a lovely project -- a scented mediation on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Sixteen perfumers and eleven bloggers are participating and I was lucky enough to be included.

In any circumstance I would be so flattered, but I have particular affection for this play among the Bard's works. Like so many, I read it in high school.  However, A Midsummer Night's Dream also came to the Houston Grand Opera around that time, and I got to see it on a choir field trip.  It was the first, and remains the only, opera I have had the opportunity to see live and in person.  Even today, almost twenty years later, I remember thinking how beautiful and magical the story was.  The music was beautiful, the sets were stunning, and the emotion palpable.

Since then I've seen the play performed live twice and the three major film adaptations -- 1935, 1968, and the more recent 1999 American film, the latter at the theater. Every time I have read the play or scene a production of it, I find something new and fresh to find affection in.  Like so much of Shakespeare's works, each interpretation provides and opportunity to see the themes and parts played out differently, so that one may bring focus to one or another in making the play their own.

So it is with great pride and special affection I take part in this, A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Perfume Event, running June 14- 24. This main link will be a clearing hour for the various related writings and the place to find an updated list of posts from all the participants related to the project.

For myself?  I have four fabulous scents to review.  My posts will begin as most things Shakespeare-related do -- Anon!

Many humble thanks to all the perfumers for trusting us poor sods and our noses with your endeavors, and to Amanda of Esscentual Alchemy for putting the whole thing together.