perfumes for skin
To paraphrase Freud, it's not the evil who are full of regrets, but the good.
sorine red
style: narcotic floral
tuberose.
tuberose.
tuberose.
sorine red...
This flower blows a kiss at you in the middle of a field in the moonlight.
It is cultivated for its spike of fragrant white single or double flowers. it covers the bright colors of Mexico. el dia de los muertas.
its name means swollen, and you would be blind if you didn't see its sexyness.
it's also called st. joseph's staff, which is my name, and i name this after my sister who paints, paints in furs, bones, colors. this is red, though the flower might be white, by twists and turns you smell this perfume and you will see a reddish color flash on the back of your eyes, a dusty red, appealing, knowing, something monolithic about it. mysterious and engaging.
it happens to be supported by other narcotic flowers, a heavy dose of jasmine, orange blossom, neroli--distilled with flowers--and that naughty, sneaky drug, ambergris.
it's supported on a base of myrrh, costus, ambrette. but it doesn't need much musk, it's a different kind of thing. it's thinking sexy. oh, and vanilla, whose pods stick out of the branches straight into the heart of that moonlit tuberose.
Upstate, NY
style: the sweet sap of evergreens.
story:
Upstate, NY was made from a memory i had of a trip from chelsea to upper state with my boyfriend and my two small dogs. my rat terrier was dying att he time, so i took her out for lots of fresh air and walking. the air was chilly, and this perfume, at 25% if perfect for fall and winter. coniferous, sweet, and snuggly, it will remind you of a forest getting ready to go dormant and only the evergreen will survive.
"candy store"
style: fruity, fun, vanilla...lemon drops....peppermints...vanilla chews...
story:
candy store? wanna take back a few decades....? when i was a kid, i used to walk by a 7-11 every day, and every day, i had change in my pocket to buy something. i was just starting to wear siouxsie & the banshees t shirts, so i wasn't that young...if i wanted something big, i'd save my $1.10 for school lunch, and go nuts at the 7-11: lemon drops, peppermints, cola, vanilla chews, all of that stuff i still love, so to pay homage to the taste of that candy, i made this.
p.s. by the time i was outta elementary school the prices of lunches rose to $1.35.
"oriental dreams"
style: floral, oriental
story:
i signed up for an online course because it promised to tell you what an oriental was. so i did, even though i hardly had the money for it.
but indeed, it did make true to its promise. not only that, the online course gave you a formula on an oriental accord--after 6 hours of others.
well, i made it and liked it, but it was just that, an accord. it lack a soul, so i modified it, and the result is one of my favorite perfumes to date.
this art project has produced is full of narcotic flowers: jasmines, tuberose absolute, ylang ylang absolute, orange blossom absolute, nestled in a coat of armor of resins: frankincense, myrrh CO2, opoponax, surrounded by a plush insulation of labdanum absolute, patchouli, cinnamon absolute...not what you're thinking..., and other spices and tonka...and...and...and!
i can hardly wait...to get in there.
the best there is! my favorite so far!
sweet dreams...
"12-year old smoking"
style: youthful, engaging, enduring adults to be closer to you, like the beautiful, sinful alter boy with his blonde hair tinged wrapped with aged tobacco leaves.
story:
a sense of youth doing something wrong, being a bad boy, he smokes his first cigarette with his best friend, katrina reed....one puff, ok, two, ok, three, uh, uh, coughs up a lung.
with notes of pure tobacco absolute, synergizing with a woody base, this odor changes, not in the traditional 3-step way, but constantly, whispers of art and tobacco, cinnamon, florals, a tap of the phone musk--just to make the tobacco bloom in the heart and make it sturdy in the dry-down--soft, warm woods.
this aroma wisps around you like blonde hair, the first smell of an addictive box of cigarettes, the precious hint of smoke, sets in ambergris, a natural one, and balsamic coumarin, like a double-image of himself scented with a light tap of violets and natural black orris and, of course, the artist's best friend, patchouli. you can't make out the notes one by one, but they're there, i promise you. contains zero nicotine, i'm sorry.
"woman in the back room"
style: a riff of talented formulas, contemporary, laden with rose absolute from bulgaria and the chemist lab. it takes 20,000 petals of roses to make a gram of absolute. herein is your absolute floral.
story:
this woman, chica mia, spends her time drinking and gambling on lottery tickets in the back room of the bodega across the street from my apartment.
she is small, wide-assed, brown eyes, that droop from the vodka. she wreaks of it.
wearing her cheap rose water and flordia water on top of that, as if that will break through the quaily of the smoking, the pot, and the masculinity all around her...as she is the only woman there in the backroom, no other chicas are allowed.....
"hey, amigo," to the owner, "do you know they're smoking in there?"...oh, no, no, not supposed to happen, and then chia mia, living off of food stamps and hooking for business, comes out of the crooked door and says to Luca, the owner, "listen to me, papi, there's no more left! hey boy-boy, to me...
so based on the 12-year old me smoking my first cigarette is a rose absolute, whispers of tobacco with pure rosa from bulgaria, and it's stunning, the effect, to see the look in her eyes as she says, let me smell you blanco...i'm not white...okay, blanco. and she's surprised, "it's better than fine that's for sure."
"i made it for you"
with rose in an overdose in the top middle and dry-down, with the same whispers of love surrounding her soul as my 12-year old self...
"animal dry oud"
style: a throw-back to a time where animals secretions laid bare in almost every odorant. this time combined with three varieties of agarwood.
story:
there is such a thing as a wet, damp, fecal-smelling agarwood.
there is the same thing in many odors.
the artist searches for one that is rich, lovely, and smooth...and one that is affordable to experiment with. only until it's refined will he use the aged one....
it has to be aged, but not at $135 a gram...
so i, the conductor of odors, reconstructed an aged agarwood by using reverse technology, taking a sample of oud, and smelling its origins, the origins of animals, the glands that produce this odor, and animals do, it's the best.
in low does these odorants are seductive and on the dry-down is sweet treat. a true animal accord of civet, castoreum, different animal musks...all legal and harvested in farms...
and there's no top, because agars are perfumes in themselves and had it not been for animals, almost dammed to mix with....
but the dry-down in this is an incredible point of sweet light, that radiates a sugary sexiness, from the glands of animals and the distilled agarwood tree, for i DO use the real one, it was easier, more expensive, but much much easier...concentrated by a hand of a sexy Adonis.
if a greek god smelled of lust, it would be this.
"fossilized gems"
style: petrified saps, resinous, historical, religious, demands attention. it is real amber. not ambergris, not hippy, but amber...
story: amber, the one you're thinking of is easy enough to make. it's labdanum, vanilla, and benzoin. 3 parts. 1 sweat, sexy feel, but it's over-rated. everyone seems to love it. i twist their heads, as sparkling, like sunlight on gold leaf, is a fossil, an amber stone that can be "dry" distilled--the fossils of ancient baltic amber from 35 million-year-old Himalayan trees' resins.
with this, you smell history, and it is a course of a history of the world. unlike the three ingredients above, which are safe and happy to wear, this fossilized gemstone, for it looks radiant and shiny, has a different aromatic profile.
here you have a smoke, and i give you resins, leather, and a tap on the phone of tar.
accentuating this ancient history are a beautiful blend of musks. it's out-of-site, extraordinary, and unlike anything, anything, you have smelled before.
hints of balsamic pine overtones, dry, almost bitter. must be experienced, and you will smell the petrified woods in there, you will smell the ages of wars and the discovery of coal and petroleum. you will also discover the himalayan mountains... and it's precious resins to be boiled, reduced, and given to God, you.
"carnation play"
style: fired-floral and spicy.
SOLD OUT
story:
for an odorant lover, you will try anything to meet your concept with your presentation.
so it is here, where i burnt carnation absolute, mixed in vials of oud, agar, and true, aged ambergris.
in addition to this sinfully playful mix, i added funny notions of a musk to accentuate the carnation, even if it is burned. playfulness like a child in the park getting his hands and ankles smeared with smudges of dirt.
"auraic amber"
style: cedar, labdanum, vanilla, benzoin. a contemporary concept made into a scent.
story:
a study on a concept, amber is ubiquitous. that's why i created this amber....it smells like amber, like my sister, Cyndi, used to wear. an oil she bought at a record store called 7-7-7 Records, right along with a nasty patch that i don't know where it came from. hippy shit.
conceptualism is Mr. Tom Friedman staring at a piece of paper for 1,000 hours. it's the idea behind the product that's important, and you experience it if you dare to read the little metal plate in the gallery or museum, and then you understand it, walk away, and it might linger, but it turns off, the image is gone, the concept remains.
this is an idea of amber. it's faint, light, not syrupy or heavy, quite the opposite: you spray it, it's barely noticeable, and it turns on. it speaks at one volume only, only one, a whisper at 3%, that is important to me. that number, and the idea of a deconstructed amber.
it floats around you, not from you, not because i added musks or other radiant materials, but because i designed it with a certain architecture and texture from my memory of seeing that piece of paper. it's not just a piece of paper, it's paper that's been infused with concentration, but it really is just a piece of paper, but no other paper is like it... you view a building, turn around and see a tree or a church or a group of friends, and your memory of the first...do you even remember what it was...is gone. that piece of paper is gone, replaced with a monet....something "more," more averagely beautiful. what you've been taught is pretty, is a real painting behind the corner...
this isn't nature, it's natural, with an idea...it's conceptional. this turns on at the trigger of the atomizer, floats around you for a few hours, a stream of unimaginable color, the aura, and then it suddenly turns off. it neither peaks nor fades. it's there or not there. the lack of transitioning is my study. it's a successful play on visual art and olfactory art.
and then, suddenly, you notice it's gone, if you even remembered it at all.
"angel w/pines"
style: bergamot and lime, pine notes intermingle with frankincense top notes and musky breezes of dry ash. oriental in feel, this is a true american angel in a forest with a pocket bit of incense.
story:
frankincense is a contemplative angel who is laying on a lambswool blanket under the pine trees in a forest
in californina. the scenery: tall pine trees rising to heaven, surrounded by a circle of pine combs; the angel breaks out an incense burner. they have a small bit of resin with them.
it's not enough, not heavenly enough. enough, it burns frankincense, the incense' ethereal top notes amplify the pine notes, and the heart a musky incense, and a drydown of cedar trees, comforting our fallen angel in the drydown. lighting it, frankincense, or frank, and trees and combs and a bit of lime and bergamot on the top, and it's heaven.
"naughty girl"
style: fantasy, boudoir, violet flowers, as candied as their glitter, set against the backdrop of men's smiles
and leather corsets. though fantasy, this is a perfect example of radical perfumery. goes on strong, quickly lightens up to beautiful violet-meets-skin-meets-rippled corsets.
story:
naught girl was made for my friends that I grew up with that started at Rachel's Strip Club in orlando as waitresses. They were formerly waitresses at Hooter's, and graduated to the booty-dust world, ultraviolet lights of a real strip club. they learned quickly, at 16, 17, 18, that, yes, they wear the same revealing clothes as Hooter's, and i would meet them there in the middle of their shifts to watch them waitress and, eventually, dance topless, then totally nude. how much fun were those days, where i would drink for free, confusing all of the guys that spent their two-weeks' worth of wages on my friends? how simply confused. so in memory, i made a leather-n-lace scent, an ode to fleetwood mac, herein described as leather corsets and ultraviolet violets. there's no drop of violet absolute in here. they aren't worth it.
*****
all requests to be made to joe@lupusandvega.com
embossed with Lupus & Vega's logo, wax sealed,
an odorant artist's project brand.
pity, in church, you don't light candles any longer, you only turn them on and someone turns them off.
my odors are lit with fire.