Le Cyclope

During the Yokai project, I made Kappa—the cucumber-in-canal-water scent born out of sheer spite because I utterly despise the smell of cucumbers. For this round, since I made Calypso fairly straightforward (even with a 3% Calone overdose, haha), I wanted to make a perfume that makes people go "WTF?!" again. And since we were going full WTF, I dragged Phi First into the madness with me, hahaha!

When setting the concept, I chose Polyphemus because the giant lived in a cave surrounded by sheep. During the escape, Odysseus gets him drunk on wine and blinds his eye with a spear 👁️️🍡. Naturally, representing Alcoholic Perfume, I tossed the task to Phi First to craft a port wine accord, while I built a blue cheese accord (modeled after Roquefort), which to me captures the essence of a cave + sheep (milky funk + fermented sourness + mineral notes). Finally, I fused it with wool absolute (derived from extracting sheep's wool—rumored to smell like sheep placenta cream, haha), choya nakh (roasted seashell oil that smells remarkably like seafood), and oud (I walked into the shop and asked for the heaviest barnyard option they had—the kind that smells straight-up like 💩).

It's the most intensely animalic perfume I've ever made because I wanted to push the scent of the cave, the sheep, and the giant to the forefront. But despite how terrifying it sounds, many people who tested it actually loved it, so I was like, "Oh? Well, I guess we're selling it, haha!" Plus, the raw materials combined were exorbitantly expensive—costing double per kilo what Calypso cost, and Calypso's raw materials were already insanely pricey!

Mise en Scène

Anyway, put aside all the scary descriptions for a moment and come try it out at The Iliad and The Odyssey Perfume Exhibition at Siam Discovery, G Floor, all through the month of June!