Strange Invisible Perfumes has launched Moon Garden, a “luxuriant bouquet of tuberose, jasmine and pikake…bejeweled with African resins”, and inspired by the night gardens popular in the Victorian era:
These exquisite gardens were cultivated for men and women to appreciate by moonlight in order to preserve their fair skin from the sun…
Strange Invisible Perfumes Lady Day was inspired by jazz vocalist Billie Holiday, who was known affectionately to her fans as Lady Day and who always performed with white gardenias in her hair. The fragrance notes are gardenia, lemon verbena, blood orange, jasmine, and sandalwood.
Lady Day opens with a burst of gardenia. It is heady and overbearing, much like a freshly cut gardenia flower, and too much of a good thing for the first 20 minutes or so…
The Strange Invisible Perfumes Signature Collection comprises 18 fragrances created by Alexandra Balahoutis. 10 of them will be on counter at Barneys in October. All are in parfum concentration, and let’s just get the bad news out of the way: they are not cheap. They run $185 for 1/4 oz.
The good news: these are well-crafted and unusual perfumes. I did not love all of them, but not a one bored me, and I found a few of them startlingly beautiful. They are not the sort of thing that you buy to impress your co-workers at a business meeting or to attract a mate; they are perfume-lover’s perfumes, made for people who like to smell things. They require patience: several of them have difficult top notes, and develop very slowly, over a period of some hours…
Strange Invisible Perfumes was founded in 2000 by Alexandra Balahoutis; the house was named for a line from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra: “From the barge, a strange invisible perfume hits the sense of the adjacent wharfs”.
Alexandra spent over 4 years studying the art of botanical perfumery, and her line is made without the use of synthetic notes or fixatives. She distills many of her own essences, using organic materials whenever possible, and favors the use of hydro-distillation rather than steam distillation or chemical extraction methods.
Her new boutique-perfumery will open on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, California in late September, and 10 of the perfumes from her Signature Collection will be coming to Barneys New York in October.
You have said that “making perfume was never a choice, but an involuntary obsession – there was simply no way I could ignore the impulse to make perfume”. Did this obsession come out of an appreciation of aromas or smells in general, or more specifically out of an appreciation of perfumes, and if the latter, what are some of the first perfumes you remember being captivated by?
I think that it sprouted from a love for aroma and a passion for ideas. I loved the way an aroma could summon a feeling of what inspired it. I wanted perfumes that smelled like my ideas, associations, and inspirations. I loved the idea of piecing aromas together into these invisible story boards. I wanted a perfume that didn’t exist…