I recently purchased a few small plants to create a summer “container garden” — basil, dill, peppermint. I’ve done this before, although not last summer or the year before (I must have had something else on my mind?) and I’m looking forward to having a supply of fresh-picked herbs again. And, of course, there’s the smell factor. The mint plant, in particular, had me burying my nose in its leaves on the walk home.

Right around the same time, I was happy to hear that the first release from Nomenclature’s new Modern Eclectics collection is Minted, an “aromatic woody scent” with notes of mint, maté, jasmine, papyrus, Atlas cedar, violet, lemongrass, bergamot and brown sugar for “the fragrance equivalent of a deep breath.” This collection is playful, but in a different way from the original Nomenclature collection, with its aroma-chemical “molecule” inspirations and its lab flask bottles: the Modern Eclectics presentation includes collages by visual artist Rafael Santiago as well as short, whimsical poems, and the descriptions of its scents refer to nature, to flavors, even to internet culture. Minted (created for Nomenclature by perfumer Jérôme Epinette) takes “Moroccan mint tea on ice” as one reference point, but also plays with multiple readings of “mint” as taste, as currency (hence the dollar sign in its visuals) and as the condition of newness…

Read the rest of this article »