Providence Perfume Co Ivy Tower: fragrance review

"Wow, this smells like…I've never smells anything like this" or "This doesn't smell like Dolce & Gabban's Light Blue. What do you have that smells like what I usually wear?"are a couple of the whispered comments of customers at the brick & mortar store of Providence Perfume Co, at Providence, RI 02903. I have recently written on the Aesthetic Principle which, like the pleasure principle, should, I believe, lead our choices on fragrances in an increasingly rationed world. And thus I find it pertinent that my review of Ivy Tower should follow it. Here is a green floral that is beautiful, delicate, different and missing the "herbal" component of some all naturals, which to echo its perfumer "doesn't smell like Light Blue and I'm OK with that."

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Green fragrances are a difficult bunch to render in all natural essences, mainly because the green-smelling materials fall into two groups which each possesses one stumbling block: the natural elements, such as galbanum resin, are either very hard to dose in a composition of all naturals without overpowering the blend (Chanel No.19 and Jacomo Silences are not  perfumes for wussies!) or else are so subtle that they vanish quickly, such as the cucumber-tea note of mimosa blossom.; the more convincing synthetic materials such as cis-3 hexenol with its cut-grass feeling, Ligustral (snapped leaves) and Lilial with its green lily of the valley aura are of course off grounds for a natural perfumer.

Chanel No.19 Poudre tried to reconcile the green monster with the emerald-hued polished nails with the grassy rolling waif in gauzy whites and it presents a modern "temperate" effort that is valiant, if a bit tamed, for the lovers of the original Chanel icon that inspired it. I don't recall many other contemporary fragrances in the delicate greens genre that truly made it (A Scent by Issey Miyake though quite good never met with the success it deserved, Bvlgari's Omnia Green Jade is sorta too tame for its own good), excluding the niche scene for obvious reasons.

So Charna Ethier exhibits skill in rendering a rustic rained upon scene from somewhere north; like a secluded private garden in York, in North Yorkshire, I had once visited, all rainy soaked paths and ivy climbing on stone-walls retaining the rain drops and reflecting them like giant water bubbles that make your bones chill a bit even in the dead of summer. The fragrance of Ivy Tower like those bubbles takes on shades of green, blue, and gentle lilac, depending on where it hits on a warm, blood-pulsing vein and hovers there for a while in the confluence of watery sprites and drowning Ophelias. Eventually it takes on a more customary jasmine, lilies and woodsy notes path, but the journey up to there is dreamy enough to make a heart melt a bit.

Ivy Tower  (green) is part of a new collection of natural perfume oils by all naturals perfumer Charna Ethier of Providence Perfume Co, whose Samarinda has been reviewed on these pages before. The rest of the collection includes Rose 802 (pink), Orange Blossom Honey (orange), Summer Yuzu(yellow), Sweet Jasmine Brown (blue) and Violet Beauregarde (violet). The oils are color coded, which is supremely practical when sampling. The choice of an oil format (admittedly not one of my strong suits as I usually like the abundance effect that an alcohol based format allows) stems from the customer base: people blending essences at Providence's popular perfume bar, citing a desire for portability and longevity. 

The given notes for Ivy Tower by Providence Perfume Co are: jonquil, mimosa, geranium, jasmine, narcissus, blue tansy, lily, sandalwood. Info and purchase at www.providenceperfume.com

In the interests of disclosure I was sent a sample by the perfumer for reviewing purposes. 

Providence Perfume Samarinda: fragrance review

Samarinda was an unexpected surprise in my mailbox replete with an eco-benefit (more on which below) and it was a pleasant one which prompted this review. Independent perfumers come with the benefit of being able to both experiment with no concern of focus groups and with the passion that comes with doing what you believe you should do instead of what you know you should do in order to sell well. Not that artisanal perfumers are beyond the scope of a true business, if they have leaped off the amateur description concocting elixirs in their back kitchen, but you know what I mean; wouldn't you rather have someone disregard trends, likability stakes, IFRA restrictions and focus on what seems "like a good idea, let's try it out and see"? Charna Ethier of Providence Perfume Co. is one such.

Ethier is a botanical perfumer, working with natural essences and what I believe are extractions from materials not common in mainstream (and even niche) perfumery, such as choya nakh, a roasted seashell  essence which is truly unique and which I personally find captivating thanks to its evocation of the animalic marine world. Samarinda is using this essence, alongside many others which initially seem incongruous (the above mentioned choya nakh side by side with Sumatran coffee alongside jasmine rice, oakwood, leather, rum ether and flowers), but the blend is quite astonishingly tempered and uplifting. The cardamom note on top is so fitting to coffee that it transports me instantly to a warm morning sipping a demitasse in a middle-eastern setting. But there's further along the map that this perfume can take us…

The sweetish floriental has a delectable boozy (richly rum-like for armchair travelers on the high seas seeking pearls in oysters down the depths of the Indian Ocean) and a lightly smoky vibe which engulfs you with none of the intensely floral  -and then magically dissipating- pong of some all natural perfumes. Maybe the choice to do an orientalized take on Indonesia, as Samarinda aimed to do, is a wise choice olfactory-speaking, or maybe Ethier came up with just the right balance in her palette; the result is that Samarinda is a joy to wear on skin from the lightly spicy, juicy opening with its vanillic underpinning right down to the  smoky-warm woods of the drydown. It's certainly smelling better than actual Indonesia with its yeasty trail in the air.

And what's the eco-benefit? 5% of all sales of Samarinda will be donated to the World Wildlife Fund to promote the protection efforts in Borneo and Sumatra, home of hundreds of endangered rhinos, tigers, elephants and orangutans and thousands of identified and as yet unidentified plants.

In the interests of disclosure, I was sent a sample vial by the perfumer directly.