Mansion Ghosts is a new blend that will launch September 10th. For me, the ghostly and witchy themes in my work are more than just an aesthetic; they are my memories, experiences, and my pretty much incessant yearning to somehow capture liminal spaces and fleeting emotions.
I spend a lot of time wandering through mansions and mansion gardens because we have a ton of historic mansions here in New England and they are one of my favorite places to spend time. Not surprisingly, most of them are haunted, mostly with benign ghosts or heavy memory imprints —but ghosts nonetheless. This blend is my tribute to them and to their beautiful spaces.
This perfume features a white musk bedecked with the haunting, earthy, hay-like scent of tagetes marigold flowers set upon the crisp almost woodsy aroma of antique linens. Candied apple and pink peppercorn lend a slight hint of peppery fruit before all of the elements settle and comingle in a beautiful, breezy, clean white musk. Of all my new fragrances, this is actually the one that I struggled most with when it came time to describe it, and I think it’s because even though tagetes marigold is a flower, it doesn’t act like a typical “flowery” floral at all. It’s much more earthy and strange and tends to possess the other notes in interesting ways.
I always aim for something that smells timeless, though some of my blends tend toward the antique or vintage. Mansion Ghosts feels neither vintage or contemporary; it’s perfectly in between and really encapsulates that sort of transitional/overlapping worlds sort of space that I always experience when visiting historic mansions or wandering their gardens. For me, wet on the skin, all of the notes hang perfectly balanced in a woody, peppery candied fruit that slowly peels back until the white musk is revealed and then they all come back and dance together again. After about four hours, it’s all marigold possessed white musk.
There is also a sort of magic in this one that reminds me of the precise moment when I feel the atmosphere transition from summer to fall —not something that I planned (I love happy accidents!), but this one is special to me for that reason.