Palimpsest
Aftelier (2014)

I smell Palimpsest out of order, with the breathy oud (usually a base note) the first to strike my nose. This isn’t really oud at all, of course, but firewood, an essential oil from an African tree (of which I own a tiny vial), interacting with a stale, marshy ambergris. Then the ylang, honey, fruit notes – all in various stages of intensity – rise up and fall back in patterns that are not that easy to follow.

This seems appropriate, given that the word palimpsest refers to a text where the previous words have been erased to allow for new ones to be written, but sometimes peek through, offering us a glimpse of what was originally there. In Palimpsest, notes come and go, folding back over one another, erasing and then revealing their former selves. At times all you smell is stale wood, and at others, the unctuous rot of a hunk of agarwood smeared with old honey and left to fester in a steamy jungle. At other times, a buttery, sunlit ylang. The texture also vacillates. Palimpsest is simultaneously dusty and wet, smoky and oily.

For a long stretch, past the woody opening, Palimpsest lingers on honey, specifically the organic stuff that smells like malt, wildflowers, and pine bark. This is a very Vero Kern-ish sort of honey – saliva-ish, musky, licked skin and all. Withered peach skin flits in and out, slicing through air thick with agarwood dust motes. At some point, the ylang makes a run for it. Or maybe it was always there, and I just notice it now. Loud and happy, the fat banana fingers of the ylang hydrate every inch of the heretofore dry, slightly stale wood-honey surface of the scent, filling its desiccated pores with peachy butter and tropical pancake syrup.

Palimpsest, in being simultaneously as languid as a peach, as high-pitched as honey, and as leathery as agarwood, reminds me of Sepia or Tango (also by Aftelier Perfumes) in that they are all very complex, almost puzzling scents that take some time to pick apart. In fact, I am not sure that something like Palimpsest belongs in a category as straightforward as ylang. It is part of the arcane library of scent imaginings of Vero Kern and Mandy Aftel, books that will forever remain stranded in the ‘uncategorizable’ section. I never thought of Mandy Aftel’s work and Vero Kern’s work as being similar, and really, they are not – but perhaps there is a certain (female) non-linear way of thinking about notes and accords that acts as a common thread.

First whiff is Animalic, Sweet, Salty and vaguely grotesque. I am alone, sitting in a lounge chair, on a private beach somewhere, Spanish Coast, sun blazing. On the side table there is a single Dark Red Yellow tinged oozing rotting Peach. I lean back into my chair, close my eyes. A moment later my eyes open and on the table is a plate of thinly sliced Proscuito and a Wine Salami. Focusing my eyes on that plane a knee high decaying wall. I am startled by how the the wall has deteriorated in such a way to take on the shape of a Skull.
This has a fascinating Repulsive/Attractive thing going on.
Second wearing Animalic, Sweet, Salty and now a note of Urine, Wine Salami, Peach Juice all ground into a leather Saddle. One moment it is mildly Equestrian similar to Eau d'Hermes, the next a harsher Peu d'Espagne or Cuir Mauresque.
It etches this vision. Art evokes.
It is something I would'nt care to wear.

Stardate 20170227:

Challenging. Smells like the concentrated incense "dhoop" and evokes scent memory that are not pleasant.
White Florals with perhaps more indoles than I can handle

Scrubber for me

This is potent floral, with what smells like some animalic - maybe from the Ambergris, or perhaps some especially spunky flowers. The listed notes of peach, ylang ylang, and vanilla sound believable. This is a beautiful, challenging perfume. I would guess it might appeal to women more than men, at least outside of Basenotes. I love the beautiful, complex smell up close.