Still from Folie a Plusieurs For Electra promotional video
In a red haze somewhere between waking and somnolence, she dreams, eyes open, as a flame dances. Bathed in warm darkness, her lips part. A fragrance walks alongside her, seeping through the dark hair that falls across her face, wrapping her in serpentine tendrils of wild greenery and drifting rose petals. Her tongue tastes purple fruit, then bitterness. She is Electra. There is pain in her desire, in love that will abandon her at the moment of surrender.
Mark Buxton, photo via Folie a Plusieurs
Berlin-and Paris-based house Folie a Plusieurs, a self-described olfactive art gallery, integrates fragrance with creative forms including cinema, art, music and literature. For Electra is based on a project between the brand, perfumer Mark Buxton and electronic band Pierce With Arrow that creates a “sonic narrative” using scent and music to portray an oblique tale of love, rejection, loss and melancholy.
Kaya Sorhaindo of Folie a Plusieurs
Founder and creative director Kaya Sorhaindo describes the relationship of scent and audio as “invisible mediums that are both activated and animated through the body. The body gives these invisible vibrations physicality, movement, matter and meaning. To be able to inhabit the emotional landscape of a musical composition by way of smell is already a beautiful thing, but for a person to consciously revisit and implement the feelings conveyed in the music in their daily lives by wearing a fragrance brings an extend life to the music.”
Photo from Pierced with Arrow via website
The brilliant Mark Buxton’s perfume emerges in parallel to the music, tracing the movements of Folie a Plusieurs For Electra’s broken tale. The soundtrack’s beginning is trancelike; a woman’s voice, echoing and distant, speaking over swirling, elusive electronic strings, like water eddying in a shallow pool at a shore’s end you cannot reach. In concert, the fragrance opens in a strange twilight garden where growing things are recognizable but muted; grapefruit, tamed of its tangy effervescence; basil, its anisic leafiness cooled; woodsy green clary sage fading in an out with the sway and dip of the music. As the music intensifies, so does the perfume. Its notes twirl about each other in skewed loveliness, merging and separating repeatedly.
Fentanyl by Federico Bebber
As the music intensifies and a heartbeat of percussion begins to pound, animal notes of furry musk and sweat hurry forward. But then, a shift in the music. Her voice has stopped; a sense of urgency, bleats like distant sirens whizzing past, then a patter like running, running, running. Pepper, echoed by spicy geranium, punctuates the air. Cassis and herbs soar. Then everything quiets. The sun gazes through haze and the music becomes diffuse. A rose emerges and opens in slow but steady motion, a heart offering itself without pause. There is the sweet resin of amber, the oily green of vetiver. All is silken, rapturous. This is passion.
And then, the withdrawal. A metallic note materializes, bringing a sense of detachment. It becomes stronger as the music buzzes and threatens to shrill. This is loss. Moss, earth, the aromas of the places in the shroud of the forest where things go to hide and sleep, come forward. The music is fading, beating like a heart moving away. Incense rises in incantation. The perfume is downy now, nestled in musk. This is the darkness. But immortelle, the everlasting flower, lingers finally, its presence reminding that love has no end.
Disintegration by Marco Escobedo
Putting the track back to start, listen again, breathe again, and for a short time, become Electra, that princess of tears and rage. The music and its fragrance convey you once more to this place of unsettling beauty, and you are lost to it.
Notes: Everlasting flower absolute, basil, cassis, clary sage, pink grapefruit, galbanum, geranium, incense, patchouli, black pepper, rose oil, amber, vetiver, soft animalic accord, moss, cashmere wood.
Disclaimer: Sample of For Electra kindly sent by Folie a Plusieurs. My opinions are my own.
Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor
Folie a Plusieurs For Electra photo courtesy of the brand
For Electra launches on September 29, 2020 and will be available exclusively on Folie a Plusieurs’ website along with Pierce With Arrow’s digital single. But thanks to the generosity of Kaya, we have a 50 ml ready to go to one registered reader in the U.S, UK, Canada or Europe. To be eligible, be sure you are registered and please leave a comment saying what appeals to you about Folie a Plusieurs For Electra based on Lauryn’s review and where you live. Draw ends 9/29/2020.
A percentage of the proceeds from sales will be donated to Colombia’s Indigenous Trans Embera women, who have been working collectively to establish a safe and sustainable new indigenous trans community.
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