The Importance of Botanical Perfume during the Fall & Winter
Do you wear botanical fragrance? We do, daily and year around. Yet if we were forced to choose a time of year we find it most vital and uplifting, it would be this one.
As the earth goes stark and fallow in the seasons of autumn and winter, our senses also grow quiet. And as we move deeper into cooler and darker days and nights we often spend less time outside, and less time interacting with plants and the natural world. Yet the body still longs for those connections.
The transition into the cold and dark seasons is one of the most important times you can incorporate botanical fragrance into your daily ritual.
We invite you this autumn and winter to explore and embrace the ancient art of Fragrant Adornment.
Fragrant Adornment
An Ancient Art
Flowers leaves, roots, resins — botanical fragrance can shift your state of mind and heart, and connect, ground, and inspire you in some of the most visceral and profound ways. Beyond the enjoyment of smelling lovely, botanical-fragrance is a tool to help us feel more connected to nature, and more connected to ourselves. A tool to keep us grounded, and to awaken our sleeping senses.
For thousands of years, our human ancestors have adorned themselves with a fragrant aura of plants. Endlessly they searched for the perfect method of extraction — infusion and diffusion, soaking, steaming, crushing, burning. All extensions of earth were delicately coaxed into releasing their intoxicating aromas. Woods, flowers, roots and leaves. Sometimes even baked earth.
Fragrance was never thought of frivolous or indulgent, but rather as devotional, unifying and an essential part of daily life. Plant Perfumes were worn for ritual, for pleasure, and for healing. To both make us holy and to remind us that we’re human. To ground us into our bodies, and to make our spirits soar.
To honor this ancient approach to fragrance, we compiled a selection of our favorite aromatics in our simple line of organic plant perfumes.
Family of Fragrance
Our whole, botanical fragrances fall into two categories: Single Notes & Blends.
Single Notes.
Alone, they are self-realized, standing strong, rich and complete. Each radiates their intrinsic identity, and weaves together with your own. Alone, you come to know your chosen plant intimately - its personality, its peaks and valleys, its sweetness and its darkness. You become a witness to its evolution on the skin, and how it blossoms hour to hour. Worn layered they reach an even higher heaven. Together they sing. Harmony, melody, and even something more - something mysterious, beautiful and unknowable. Single-note fragrance is an invitation to awaken and invoke your inner-alchemist each day as you layer from your collection and create your own unique, ever-evolving scent.
Blends.
A perfect synergy, in perfect symmetry. For our blends we gather some of our favorite plants and weave them together to create an aromatic mood. They often center around one central plant — like neroli, blue tansy, or hinoki — and find themselves elevated, amplified, and supported by a small company of other plants. A simple, one-step scent to keep on your vanity, or in your bag.
Botanical fragrance is a mighty force and if you let it, it can help to awaken your deepest primordial power and elevate you to your highest self. Let these plants be worn as an offering — to the gods, to ourselves, to each other.
Which plants will carry you through the dark season?
Single Note
Jasmine
A dark, warm and complex floral nectar — utterly hypnotic.
Patchouli
Rich and deep velvet earth, with notes of dark chocolate.
Sandalwood
Sacred woods with warm and creamy notes of smoke.
Rose
A sparkling and luminous true rose otto, with delicate notes of citrus and ripe pear.
Vetiver
Cool wet roots with a shadow of smoke.
Botanical Blends
Honeyed blooms. Hypnotic goddess. Golden rays and cool shadows in the orchard. Sensual and sweet, nectarous citrus blossoms are softened and deepened by rich and heady vanilla beans. A true fragrant adornment.
Blue Cactus
Sweetly ethereal. Clear desert skies. Herbaceous and fresh-scented Moroccan tansy, warm and sacred Hawaiian sandalwood, and honeyed ylang ylang blossoms in full bloom. To quote a customer, “It smells like it came from the realm of fairies.” The same scent profile in our cult Blue Cactus Beauty products.
Vetiver Hinoki
Sacred temple, rich earth. Enshrining & earthy. Wind through a cypress grove. A warm sensuality. Vetiver roots and japanese cypress wood synergized by sweet orange peel. Warm, sweet woods and roots.