Calypso

Around late last year, after wrapping up the Yokai project, the four of us in the crew (First, Ohm, Pond, Not) were live-streaming on the Novelic page and started chatting: "Hey, should we do The Odyssey? It's public domain, has loads of characters, and tons of material to play with." At the time, I was like, "Uh, I know of it, but I haven't read the whole book or watched the movie." So I started researching what elements in the story to tackle.

I finally landed on Calypso because, well, obviously it had to be aquatic since she lives on an island in the middle of the sea. But I'd never encountered an aquatic perfume that felt distinctly feminine. So, I took Calone—the classic aquatic aromachemical everyone knows—and overdosed it massively (to the point of being right at the limit of the upcoming IFRA 52 regulations). Then, I pitted it against forces just as powerful: ionone (violet) and ethyl vanillin (vanilla). For the finer details, I threw in generous amounts of pine, cedarwood, violet absolute (freaking expensive), and gardenia absolute (freaking-freaking expensive) because the other ingredients were just so overwhelmingly strong.

It was the piece that made me bold enough to smash heavy-hitting materials against each other. At the same time, I stayed true to my goal of keeping it an approachable, easy-to-understand scent, unlike many of my earlier, overly complex creations. I really want everyone to try this—it's a piece I poured my heart into.

Number of mods: 4 (Though the core framework was there from mod 1, the rest was just fine-tuning details).

Mise en Scène

Please check out this creation and our exhibition, The Iliad and The Odyssey, coming up next month! Drop by Siam Discovery, G Floor, anytime during the month of June.