Maneuvering cleverly beyond photorealistic attempts to recreate the complex smell of first rain on dry earth, Marissa Zappas has composed a suggestive interpretation of petrichor that is poetic, elegant, cool and captivating. I grew up in a place famous for mornings of thick silvery fog. Zappas’s Petrichor brings me right back to that veiled world of my childhood—muted visuals fading into soft-focussed silence—only the smell and sensation of cold humid earth and air blowing against my wet face. I recall it as a feeling of utter solitude with a molecular-level, planet-spanning integration. I understood I was an Earthling.
Petrichor starts unexpectedly bright with a quick lemon zing and a gentle sumptuous soil accord, like a first fresh breath of dewy morning air. It then opens further to reveal a brilliantly elegant, pitch-perfect combination of iris and vetiver that honors the natural qualities of these ingredients. Here I am rendered besotted and obsessed. The iris is tuberous, cold, gray, and waxy. The vetiver also raw, rooty but more humid, grassy, and green. Together they evoke something uncannily petrichor-like—the connection is clear—and ineffably beautiful.
Iris and vetiver are both earthbound roots/rhizomes long celebrated and familiar for their now-iconic fragrant qualities. It’s a revelation to realize that when combined, they produce this ancient experience of petrichor. I am surprised and surprised that I am surprised. A secret held in plain sight. The fragrance is inarguably, literally Earthly yet also canonically sublime and otherworldly. This contradiction is the momentous conjoining of above and below that makes petrichor so primordially meaningful. Rain on soil. Heaven on earth. Life infused with spirit.
I did not expect to like this fragrance as much a I did. I do not have such strong feelings for the other fragrances in her line. But the seemingly simple combination of iris and vetiver applied here to such profound effect is too compelling. I will not let it go. My ongoing love of cold irises is what drew me to this initially but I stay for this vetiver. I’ve not appreciated it so much until now. Presented “naturalistically,” the vetiver here is gracefully detached from the instantly hypermasculine cologne connotations I have previously suffered. Here, I am offered pre-industrial, prehistoric vetiver. I am invited to explore it for itself.
It’s a contemplative, fresh-yet-moody fragrance for day or night, not especially attractive in a commercial or heteronormative sense. I would call it intimate, private, nostalgic, even mildly haunted. Certainly without gender. Out of context, others might find it strange. It has a mustiness that can evoke an abandoned cellar or basement or a slightly stale washing machine. The sillage is close. Longevity very good with the heart lingering long and seamlessly into a gentle base of musky, mossy woods. The ribbed, bell shaped bottle with tiny black velvet bow is charming—though the cap is awkwardly tight. During this summer, it has been a comfort during long dry days—a cheat code for the distant fall/winter to come.
Top Notes 
Soil
Lemon
Heart Notes 
Vetiver
Iris
Immortelle
Base Notes 
Musk
Ambergris
Moss
Sandalwood
Tealight10
stacirl
Gandix
Heikeso
Mefunx
CharlAmbre
