Get Lippie said it best. She and I were amongst several other writers at the press launch of Aqua Vitae and as she breathed in the scent, she closed her eyes and declared, “This smells like a hug in the 70s.” At first, I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. But now, after having worn the fragrance a few times, I’m beginning to appreciate the notion which occurred to her as soon as she encountered this latest release from Francis Kurkdjian.
In prosaic terms, Aqua Vitae is an extremely light, almost-but-not-quite invisible woody floral, with a sweet citrus opening (Calabrian lemon linked to Sicilian mandarin in a particularly tantalising accord) and a gentle musk base. According to Kurkdjian, more than 50% of the juice contains Hedione – that most radiant, luminous of synthetics – and a fair proportion is made up of Iso E Super, an equally ubiquitous material, redolent of minerals and sun-warmed bodies. So, at least on paper, AV is nothing mould-breaking.
Kurkdjian says he was inspired to create it by a single phrase – “the space between us” – which struck him as poetic and evocative on a very personal level. I’d assert that he’s created an olfactory representation of those words with commendable accuracy. Aqua Vitae is bright and life-affirming, but it’s also haunting and soulfully retrospective. I still maintain that Get Lippie said it best – this really does feel like a hug in (or should that be ‘from’?) the past – but if I were pushed to come up with my own pithy one-liner, I think it would go something like this. Aqua Vitae is Kurkdjian’s deceptively simple story about that most powerful of subjects: the memory of perfume.
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Dearest Persolaise
How post modern this perfume sounds… 'skiting' around the hems of such great scents.
These allusions alone make me keen to try this…what a shame summer seems to have departed, it seems designed for sunshine.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Dandy, yes, this one is probably geared towards warmer weather… but I'm looking forward to trying it in winter too. I think it might prove to be very interesting.
[…] favourite in this range remains 2013’s Aqua Vitae, mainly for the haunting, nostalgic quality that Kurkdjian somehow captured in the combination of […]