THE SEA, THE SEA.. ..      THE MARINER’S RHYME by FRANCESCA BIANCHI (2024) + PELAGOS BY DUSITA (2024)

N: You like and wear marine perfumes much more than I do. 

D: Yes, especially in summer – in fact, almost exclusively so.

N: On roiling hot Japanese August days I will sometimes wear some Kenzo Pour Homme for nostalgia purposes (that stick deodorant works well with the original unreformulated bottle I still have in the frosted glass bamboo), and I can do aquatic tropicalic florals quite happily, but somehow algae, waves and salt smell better on you, even though you are not a natural swimmer. 

D: Never been a water baby, sadly, unlike you. 

N: I have never understood people who prefer municipal pools. Warm, chlorinated water potentially laced with old piss. Goggles that suck your eyeballs in, caps that hurt the scalp and make you look foolish. And then swimming around in formulation with some calloused old foot in your face as you swallow the ‘water’. Yuck. Give me a rock to dive off from and some ocean anyday, even when you go headfirst straight into a school of jellyfish, as you will remember I did twice at the beach in Hayama. I had quite the stinging. 

D: Yes, your shoulder and arm were like strawberry jam. A real toxic baptism.

N: And yet I still went back the next year and the same thing happened again!  I just love the beach there.

Onto the oceanics as a genre. I have been into perfume long enough to remember the precise shock of the arrival of the aquatics; Sunflowers, New West, then Kenzo and Escape and all the rest; they felt unnatural, weird – it was like splitting the atom; iconoclastically new and different. Cool Water struck me as being a bridge between the two worlds – oceanic-ish – but didn’t have the full bonanza of later horrors such as Acqua Di Gio Pour Homme, where you were given the full symphonics of every possible note shot through with overdoses of calone to the point that you could taste it in your dinner or your drink at the bar. I am really glad those days are over:  the unnatural repugnance of Calvin Klein Escape and Givenchy Fleurs D’Interdit which then of course later spawned the unforgiveable Chloe. 

Anyway, I digress. The modern oceanics are more ocean centered, more focused,  less everything but the kitchen sink, and I prefer that. You smell amazing in Filippo Sorcinelli’s Nebbia Spessa for example, and I really like you in Heeley Sel Marin and Art De Parfum’s Le Joker, although for me, the correct dosage is vital. Too much of any of these – of any marine – and I am gagging in revulsion. For me the weather, the amount, the surroundings all are very key. I am still a bit daunted by this genre of fragrance, ultimately. 

D: Yes, I loved Nebbia Spessa as soon as I smelled it. A salty sweet halo that is modern and cooling and minimalistic – and yet puts me into a vast misty reverie. It’s kind of genius I think. Heeley Sel Marin adds in a little citric warmth – Heeley scents are suave but I like that about them, not a muddy number among their range – and Le Joker has a more turpentinic tang and that nutmeg, which is very sexy – more grit to it. Three great scents, but yeah, apply with restraint: there’s a thin line between suspending yourself in salty bliss and poisoning those in your proximity. I think I just adore marine and ozonic notes with musks and oakmoss.

N: Francesca Bianchi’s new creation The Mariner’s Rhyme is an exquisite marine perfume. The tone is similar to Sel Marin in its mid toned mellowness, but without the latter’s slightly overconceited suavity (Marin just loves his own sillage just that little bit too much). I find this one of the most poetic marines I have smelled, really cool and relaxing, but with an edge. The citruses and herbs are all in perfect balance, the oceanic notes lilting and drifting on the breeze, but there is also something else lurking beneath – something that really draws you in. I think she has nailed this one. 

D: What a wonderful list of ingredients: bergamot, grapefruit, lavender and elemi on top – lavender gives a sort of leathery aromatic quality when you first spray it; orange blossom, iris, ozonic notes at the centre – love that iris is there – so classy; ambergris, oakmoss, patchouli, incense at the base. Definitely comparable to Sel Marin – refreshing and cooling, elegant – but as you say, it has an added enigma. Really good. 

N: In comparison with the oceanic serenity of The Mariner’s Rhyme, Pissara Umavijani’s Grecian sea odyssey, Pelago – a marine iris fougere – is more assertively powerful and unforgettable, but I have my own fundamental personal issues with the fougere- as soon as a perfume dries down to that macho swagger I get angry as a Pavlovian Rottweiler – but that is just due to my own history with aggressive males and their scented associations.  There is some of that in the base of this scent – Pelagos is a real tuxedo killer with a dark heart of poisonous indigo (the new James Bond? or his new nemesis?); a very hot individual that I can’t help being attracted to up to a point until he reveals that aggression – but the perfumer nimbly avoids the usual pitfalls of straight manliness that put me off the last perfume, La Rhapsodie Noire, where the delicious lavender licorice of the top ceded eventually to a man we have all met a thousand times before. I think the cool iris in the top here of Pelagos combined with the darker notes is very clever and original, like a muscular nude in satin sheets of midnight blue   – it is extrait strength and it really feels like it! – but I can’t be entirely objective about Pelagos. I was with Pissara when she was wearing it that day in Ginza, and smelling it again is one of the most sensorially immediate experiences I have ever had. I am there with her again, viscerally, immediately, when I smell it. The court therefore orders the jury not to consider this evidence. 

How does it work on you?

D: Well, I liked the opening and the ending, but there is something hovering about the middle that I just didn’t get with. It’s powerful and impressive – a sultry heaviness at the heart (that must be the indolic jasmine with orris, thyme and tonka bean – buttressed by woods on top and below – pine, sandalwood, vetiver) like a vintage perfume in its way – but ultimately not for me. I’m an Issara and Le Pavillon d’Or boy through and through – I don’t really understand Pelagos – maybe it is the jasmine adding a weighty twang? Sure it will work wonders on some, though. It’s very idiosyncratic, as you’d expect from Pissara – she’s always bold and interesting. 

But you omit my favourite modern salty marine scent: the luxuriant, lilting, megawafting aquatic dreamboat, Mémoires d’une Palmeraie 11. I know you tend to shudder when I pick it up and once said I could fill a soccer stadium with two squirts of that (I have regularly transformed the bus with it). 

N: I have an excellent memory connected with that one. Following you on the bike when we went out for a stroll one summer. One shot to the wrist, in the air around you, was like actually being by the sea. So salty it made me physically thirsty.