Mystery of Musk Project: Kickstarting with Kewdra by Anya's Garden

The Mystery of Musk began as an innovative project in which natural perfumers tried to render a viable, sustainable animalic musk through non-animal sources. As we had announced, the time has come and now we're reaping the benefits of that effort. Samples have flown across the globe, mixing the arcane with the imaginative and the puzzling, challenging us into coming up with the right words to do them justice. Expect to see posts tackling these new perfumes and a giveaway of a whole bottle of them tomorrow. So check up daily for news and updates!

As homage to the instigator of the project and the president of the Natural Perfumers' Guild, I decided to kickstart with Anya McCoy, no stranger to these pages, whom most of you know from her fragrance line Anya's Garden. Literally, as she grows all sort of interesting and lush things in her Miami Shores garden, things that would take your breath away.
Her entry? Kewdra, a “modern Indian-style musk perfume”, inspired by Alobar’s Hindu beloved, the highly-fragrant Kudra, as featured in Tom Robbins’ famous novel Jitterbug Perfume. Anya introduced it thus: Kudra surely loved the Kewda flower of her native India and would have blended it as a masala formula that spread the gardenia and boronia flowers in a seamless heart that beats over the Kama-Sutra evocative "smell of your lover's skin" base notes.

Natural perfumes create their own web of intricacy, their drawbacks just as a many as their advantages, the challenge lying into making the materials pliable and tenacious enough to conform to classic perfumery needs. Pandanus has been already used in her unique Fairchild while an animalic note from the most improbable source (tincture of a real living rutting billie goat's hair) was explored in Pan. So you could say that Anya knows more than a few things about how to construct a complex animalic.
Pandanus flower- aka Kewda or Kewra- is the star performer in the new fragrance, a diva-esque scent which reminds me of an ample-blossomed lady spilling out of her tube top. I knew Pandanus flower from Indian chutneys which customarily accompany meat dishes, where its honeyed facets reveal themselves like liqueur; I also knew boronia from my trip to Australia, where the magical smell permeates the air when in season.
Then of course there is also beeswax in there, an exalted animalic note produced through a gentle technique involving bees' complex constructions without harming the animals.

In Kewdra pandanus makes its entrance all a-bust, proud, heavy, rich. But the effect dissipates soon, leaving a mingle of flower essences (Anya used a rural Chinese 5-petal gardenia which I can only assume is supremely costly) and natural sources of musk (such as angelica root and ambrette seed). These blend into a sweet, smooth vibe which licks the skin the way an Indian heroine in the Kama Sutra would.

Getting into the process of Kewdra requires a little patience but once you're there, the drydown cannot but appeal. Its sweet, intimate aspect evokes the scent of honey dribbled on skin. I am reminded of Baroness Moura Budberg, a Russian aristocrat who allegedly became a Soviet spy. Enigmatic to the end, she famously led an affair with the British spy R. H. Bruce Lockhart during the Revolution and later became the lover of both Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells. Now Wells wasn't a pretty man, not attractive in any visual way. Moura’s own explanation for the unlikely liaison was that the attraction was sexual, even as she refused to marry him or remain faithful - "Wells’s skin", she said, "smelled of honey"...

Kewdra will be available at Anya's Garden e-boutique shortly and the 10ml bottle depicted will be given away by the Non Blonde soon!
Participating Sites on The Mystery of Musk Project:
Yahoo Natural Perfumery group
I Smell Therefore I Am – Abigail Levin
Perfume Shrine – Elena Vosnaki
The Non Blonde – Gaia Fishler
Indie Perfumes – Lucy Raubertas
Bitter Grace Notes – Maria Browning
CaFleureBon Michelyn Camen, Mark Behnke, Ida Meister, Skye Miller, Marlene Goldsmith
Olfactarama – Pat Borow
First Nerve – Avery Gilbert
Olfactory Rescue Service – Ross Urrere
Grain de Musc – Denyse Beaulieu
Basenotes



Painting Mother India by Maqbool Fida Hussain via razarumi.com

Making Love in a Gardenia Garden

The burlesque phrase of the title, comical in its exaggeration and Fabio-jacketed-romance tendencies, sounds like the antithetical mood of Perfume Shrine's usual outlook on life.
But I am not making this up. It' a quote, funnily enough. In fact it comes from the musical Gigi starring arch-gamine French actress Leslie Caron, along with Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan and based on Colette's book by the same name. It was however the inspiration for indie perfumer Ayala Moriel to create an unusual, sui generis gardenia soliflore that bypasses the drama to be pliable to your own specifications which prompted me to reference it today for your reading and smelling pleasure.

Too often gardenia fragrances remind me of an infamous literary heroine from Greek satirist Demitrios Psathas: Madame Sousou. The story is set in the 1950s, in a low-class suburb of Athens. The eponymous heroine is a small, petty bourgeois married to a hard-working fishmonger in love with her; she wants to emulate the aristocracy, peppers her talk with French, torments her naive maid and makes the most terrific blunders both in her speech as well as in her general deportment, but with the utmost confidence and high-falluting airs! After inheriting a large sum of money she tries to change her life and leaves her husband, but devious people manage to gnaw her fortune and she has to go back to her forgiving and loving husband and what she deems the vulgarity of a low-class life.
So infamous is the character that in a strike of onomatopoeia genius someone coined the phrase "sousoudismos" in Greek to describe the way of trying to emulate something unattainable to ridiculous effect. And it has since stuck.
{It is no accident that a famous Melbourne restaurant/bistro (assuredly founded by some Greek immigrant) is using the name with fabulous results}.



Yes, gardenia fragrances often take themselves too seriously, too keenly, trying too hard. Gigi is nothing like that I am happy to report.

The strange green and slightly bittersweet vibe of entering the scope of a gardenia garden greets me with a trail of mandarin and what seems like the musty bitterness of vetiver up front. Kewda Attar which is more commonly known as "pandanus", that East Indian flower whose essence is marinated in sandalwood oil to render the attar, with its remarkable sour, yet soon segueing into floral notes contributes to the peculiar aroma of the top. If one does not know it's there one would be inclined to believe as I did that some citrusy peel oil mixed with hyacinth and vetiver emits that strange, hypnotic aroma that beckons you closer.
White florals unmistakeably raise their head from the mix smoothed down with a great powder puff of cornstarch, musk, and bittersweet resins.

The overall effect is not as photographically realistic as Lauder's Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia, nor as titillatingly musky and unrelated to gardenia as Cruel Gardénia by Guerlain, but somewhere in a happy medium. You put the personality in it, more than it wearing you on its sleeve as regalia of conquest, and perhaps that is a new direction which was lacking in this genre.

Arguably the only fault is the staying power: it is admittedly rather short. Perhaps it is accountable by the sheer character of the base, which was intended not to overshadow the delicate heart of flowers. But since it is a scent to be enjoyed in warmer days, one can always reapply.

Ayala used the following natural essences to render an interpretation of gardenia without the synthetics usually used.
Notes:
Top: Yellow Mandarin, Coriander essential oil and Cardamom CO2, Kewda Attar, Rosewood
Heart: Jasmine Sambac, Jonquille, Tuberose.
Base: Myrrh, Sandalwood, Ambrette CO2, Vetiver from Sri-Lanka and Vanilla CO2 and Absolute.

GiGi is available for a limited time only while the Indian sandalwood essential oil stock of Ayala lasts, in the 1/4oz parfum extrait flacons, or parfum oil roll-on bottles, and the 1ml sample vials so you can try before you buy.
Available at Ayala Moriel perfumes and at Etsy shop.


And for our readers: an assortment of samples giveaway for anyone who is lucky enough to win the draw (my drawers were again filling up and action must be taken!). Please leave a note in the comments if you want to enter.

Pic from the film "Gigi" comes from Ebay. Clip from Madame Sousou series on Greek TV uploaded by dimdindan