“Natural fragrance is a unique and unexplored niche within the fragrance world that for the most part has been used for spa and aromatherapy products. This brand, therefore, claims to actively embrace, indeed showcase these ‘feral aspects of nature’, while still, presumably, culminating in aesthetically pleasing perfumes.
Rather than the ‘healing’ and scientifically verified medicinal qualities of plants (to which, as you know, I subscribe wholeheartedly empirically), the creator of the Heretic line, while appreciating those facets of aromatherapeutic substances, wants to veer away from the hippie apothecary vibe of natural perfumery and instead concentrate on the natural imperfections and messiness of essential oils in a purely olfactory setting their lack of smoothed down edges, the strange routes that they take (anyone who has ever used a raw ylang ylang or neroli a patchouli or a lavender – and especially citruses – knows that pure essential oils are not really wearable as perfumes: there are often unpleasant tangents (ylang ylang unpleasantly harsh at the end of its duration, drained of vitality rose just sour and depleted jasmine rich, foul) strange, lurking unexpectations (the hidden ‘milkiness’ of rosemary and eucalpytus the ‘curdled’ quality of natural sandalwood in some phases of its olfactive progression almost every oil in fact just too vibrant and multifaceted to be curtailed with a commercially viable simplicity). What I like about founder and perfumer Douglas Little’s officially stated approach is a new attitude to naturals, essential oils and botanical extracts in perfumery. Moreover, I have to say that the initially slightly eye-rolling ‘dirty’ concept, when you look into Heretic Parfums motivations and conceptualizations further, is actually quite interesting not based, as would probably be predicted, on the grungey musks and saccharine synthetics that get so many ‘erotic’ perfumeries’ knickers in a twist (and an absolute joke, to me, when so many vintage, ‘ladylike’ and ‘gentlemanly’ perfumes back in the day contained vastly more shocking quantities of genuine filth – think Monsieur de Givenchy La Nuit De Paco Rabanne as for Bal A Versailles…….don’t let me go there). And, to my surprise, I really quite liked some of this range when I finally got my nose on the perfumes and put my prejudices aside. How come no-one thought of it earlier?)Īnyway, the proof is always in the pudding, in the same way that you never know how someone is going to be in the sack until they are actually in there with you. Thus, though Flower Porn is most definitely an eye-catching name for a perfume – who wouldn’t notice that bottle first when they scanned a niche perfumery’s selection? – I initially gave it and its brethren from Heretic Parfums (again….always those ‘devilish’ and provocative names for perfumeries) short shrift: at first I churlishly didn’t even smell it out of a conviction that it must be cheap in sentiment, commercially desperate, and/or salaciously vacuous ( Florgasm, though, I have to say: what a name! This is genius.
While we all know that sex sells, a name like ‘Flower Porn’ immediately arouses my close-to-the-surface inner skeptic (the word ‘porn’ itself has also become vastly and tediously overused in my view, and in often very ineffective contexts : on social media you will see a beautiful quotation or a poem published, and soiled, by seeing the ugliness of the provider ‘word porn’ at the bottom of the page a photographic landscape is posted by ‘nature porn’: there is furniture porn, chocolate porn, ‘inspiration porn’, you name it – but for me these simply don’t work for me as reference points for something that you fixate on or gorge on, because, quite simply, porn is porn: titillating and exciting to many, and serving a useful purpose, but with one, very obvious aim only – and not necessarily an especially edifying one. Ordinarily I find that too much intimation of the ‘forbidden’ or the ‘naughty’ in perfumery is something of a turn off.