Serge Lutens - Fille en Aiguilles

She runs.  Barefoot into the dark places, hair tangled, afraid of nothing.  She glimpses Baba Yaga in the shadows. Here in the deepest part of the forest - the damp soil, peppered with one hundred thousand nettles - she is closest to Mother Earth. Her pulse quickens in time with the thrum and throb of Gaia's heartbeat and her breath catches in her throat when long, spindly needles of sunlight reach through the soaring trunks to place a golden crown upon her brow. These sentinels of Sacred space sing a ringing welcome to her, she is their Queen. She spins, dressed in curls of incense with jewels of molten amber. She is Goddess in triplicate; maiden, mother, crone. Innocence and age old wisdom. The huntress and the hunted. She is one with the trees, with the earth, with the stories and the storytellers. If you ever venture into the forest, you may hear her singing with the bees and you may feel her warmth in a sunlit clearing, but never try and tame her, magical things can't be tamed.~ jojo

Woody - Aromatic - Balsamic - Warm Spicy - Smoky - Fresh Spicy

The composition incorporates pine needles, vetiver, bay leaf, spices, fruit and incense.

I simply ADORE this perfume - the pine, the sap, the smoke, the incense - it's longevity is amazing, and it's projection is just right.  A true unisex juice <3

A Love Affair Began...

I'm relatively new to the indie perfume culture having stumbled across the bottle which started it all (Arcana's Eleanor of Aquitaine) quite by accident, a couple of years ago.  I was doing some ancestral research and adding images to my family tree and looking for a less barbie-inspired image of Eleanor, my 22nd Great Grandmother, to add to my tree and this little amber bottle popped up in image search. Naturally my curiosity peaked and I followed the link, read the ingredients and reviews and purchased it immediately - along with a few others - Avalon, Tess, Three Bears and Last Hours of Empires.  As soon as they arrived, an addict was born.  I've always loved perfume, and scent-memory has always been the most important time-machine of the senses for me.  I also have an extensive number of bottles of high-end perfumes (albeit many have become dust gathering, light refractors mostly). Niche perfumes speak to me. I find they can express my moods, my sense of place and standing in the world, they can take me away, cocoon me and feel less like a cloak of celebrity-endorsed fragrance make-believe and more like an expression of the primeval Goddess within.  Fast forward to now and I have countless bottles with packages arriving far too regularly (who am I kidding? I did say I was an addict! No such thing as too regularly). My plan for this blog is to hopefully lure friends and strangers alike, away from the money-snatching, celebrity obsessed fragrance culture to the Indie and niche perfumeries and let them experience the beauty of hand-blended, authentic perfumery.  I am also about to embark on the creation of my own perfumes, so stay tuned on my olfactory journey...

~ Jojo