Lapis-lazuli - Pierre du Ciel Olivier Durbano 2016

The capsule opened. He stepped out and took a deep breath. For the first time without a spacesuit...

They had worked towards this for weeks - first surveying the surface with the help of a rover, analyzing the soil, water, and air samples collected by it, weighing the potential risks of an exit. Once all values were in the green zone, he signed up as one of the first for the exit. The long journey here, the monotonous day?night? routine between glowing screens, countless buttons and switches, under the artificial “sunlight” of the spaceship, and the complete loss of the sense of time was challenging even for an experienced veteran like him. More and more often lately, he dreamed of the little house where he spent his childhood. The large field behind the house and the path across it leading to the forest. Homesickness... There is probably no remedy or training for that.

...They stepped out into the night. Two giant moons hung high above them, bathing everything in a deep, fluorescent blue. Dry, milky fog enveloped them as they ventured deeper into the valley. The air was neither misty nor humid (as one knows fog from Earth). Strange - the fog smelled pungent, ethereal, and biting like camphor, reminiscent of... of... tea tree oil that his mother kept in the bathroom cabinet. It was cool. Not a single gust of wind could be felt (did the winds even blow here?), yet the tall grass around him swayed gently and silently. Like the underwater fauna, it flowed in response to each of his movements. He knelt down, brushing his bare hand over the grass. The blue grass tips reached out towards his hand, playfully swirling around his wrist. He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent deeply. He recognized it from before. The large field, the chirping of crickets, the bitter wormwood that, when crushed in his palms, released an intense spicy-bitter aroma. The cool grass under bare feet. The forest in the distance, where he built a tent from dry wood... The vision was so realistically close, he was reluctant to be torn from the memories, but the others were already calling for him. Sighing, he looked around, surrounded by the blue sea of grass, so strange the sight and so familiar the scent. He closed his eyes once more and mentally walked the path behind the house and across the field to the forest, just as he had done a thousand times before...

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What defines the scent avant-garde for me? I usually find the fragrances very interesting, bold, sometimes even genius and unique. But if you ask me whether I would wear them, the answer is mostly “no.” It’s probably because they often completely lose their connection to reality, to truly “earthly,” tangible, and associatively comprehensible things in favor of innovation. It’s enough for sniffing from the sample, but the enthusiasm is no longer sufficient for wearing. Here it’s different. I would very much like to wear Lapis Lazuli. The quirky tea tree oil opening is difficult, unusual, and stings the nose, yes. However, I am compensated by the bitter-herbaceous, fresh-cool, undifferentiated spicy, wormwood-dominated mid-phase. I love wormwood (the herb, not absinthe) and wish it were used much more often in perfumes. The herb is my subjective Aha-I-know-I-love anchor point. At this point, I would be very grateful for hints on other wormwood HERB-dominated fragrances. Back to Lapis Lazuli - the green bitterness is softened by a kind of diffuse milkiness that, while not contributing direct sweetness, does mellow the scent considerably, making it softer, especially when the tea tree scent fades after the first 30 minutes. The “milky” quality stretches out until the end over the dry-woody, slightly resinous base (around 6-7 hours with a moderate, not overwhelming sillage).

All in all, a very unusual, classically distant, bitter-green, spicy, yet simultaneously soft-milky scent that appears truly “alien-like” due to its blue color. Scent avant-garde at its best.