The One That Changed It All

There is a turning point in learning about and appreciating any art form, especially a commoditized or commercialized one, where you realize the surface level enjoyment is not all there is. Let's take classical music, one of my other loves, as an example: anyone can listen to the pleasant sounds of Mozart and appreciate it, but not all great music sounds pleasant to the ear. Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps sounds harsh and raw, and it was meant to, but it is still enjoyed by millions around the world. I'd like to talk about the fragrance that changed my perception about perfumery as an art form when I was first starting out.

One of my first purchases as I was beginning my niche fragrance journey was a travel size set of Parfums de Marly fragrances. There were 4 10ml bottles, Layton, Percival, Pegasus, and Kalan. I tried Pegasus and Percival first. My perception of Pegasus was mostly a vanilla frag, and I wasn't a huge fan. Percival smelled like a lot of men's fragrance I was used to (I actually owned Legend Eau de Toilette at the time, which is 90% similar). And to my untrained nose, Layton kind of smelled like a combination of those two, like a vanilla + apple lavender. I was happy with them but not thrilled; I didn't like the sweet notes in Pegasus and Layton, and Percival was not interesting or new. Then I came to Kalan.

At first spray, I knew I had never smelled anything like this before. Harsh pepper, bitter blood orange. What the heck was this? It didn't smell good. And yet it was intoxicating. I couldn't stop smelling my arm where I had sprayed it. The drydown was a powerful musk that kept the unpleasant blood orange note alive. It didn't smell "good." It wasn't pleasant. And yet I loved it.

When I was younger, I realized that there were art forms closely associated with certain senses. Paintings used the sense of sight; music used the sense of sound; cooking, the sense of taste. The two missing, as I thought then, were smell and touch. I dismissed perfumery as an art form, since I thought the only purpose of it was to make you smell "good." My idea back then was to have a sort of a scent gallery, where people would stick their noses into receptacles containing strongly scented materials that were composed in such a way as to trigger a memory or a feeling. And not just pleasant scents. A beachy scent would have to include the smell of seaweed and fish, for example. Little did I know that this art form already existed, but was unknown to me.

It probably sounds silly now since there are so many more art-y fragrances out there (and I have smelled many of them), but Kalan was the one that transformed my thinking about perfume from just a way to smell pleasant to a way to express oneself. To recreate a mood, emotion, or memory through the sense of smell.

What has been your experience? Do you wear perfume just to smell pleasant, or to express yourself with harsh or interesting notes that not everyone might appreciate? If the latter, what was the turning point for you? For me, there is something intoxicating and irresistible about certain notes and fragrances that may not smell pleasant. And it all started with Kalan.