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parfumieren · 1 year ago

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Puredistance I (Puredistance)

It has always existed, in a blinding variety of forms. It goes by many names, as if to confuse the seeker. It can be found everywhere, but only if you're looking.

If you travel to Polynesia, you will hear about mana, a spiritual quality found in people and objects of power. At Findhorn Garden in northern Scotland, they'll tell you about the tutelary deva that inhabits each flower and tree. The earthy and plainspoken Vikings knew it as vættur (wight) or álfr (elf)-- both personifications of a nameless, vital energy.

In ancient Rome, philosophers called it numen, ineffable presence; the Greeks called it a eudaimon and believed it responsible for conferring happiness on all mortal beings. In Japan, it is addressed as Ō-kami, honorable great being, and is reckoned mighty enough to shake the foundations of the earth.

Incarnated in this tiny sample vial, it is called Puredistance I.

For a perfume billed as one of the most exclusive on earth, it looks quite innocuous -- a glass tube full of rosy-amber liquid, enclosed in a clever white box which unfolds like a reliquary and snaps crisply closed as though it concealed a tiny, hidden rare-earth magnet. And it probably does. The full-bottle iteration of PI comes in packaging so deluxe that I probably couldn't afford it even if it came without the perfume. Sheathed in a protective block of Swarovski crystal as if to shield it from the world's contaminants, it is clearly meant to be perceived as a precious, even powerful substance, needful of careful containment. (If this were Pandora, the atomizer and cap would be made of pure unobtainium.)

Getting the sample vial open poses a challenge, as the plastic stopper appears to operate on a flexible ball-and-socket principle, ballooning slightly within the rim to create a hermetic seal. Obviously, if I want to gain access to the elixir inside, I'll be forced to work for it. My hands tremble during the procedure-- partly from effort, partly from terror. What if I should fumble and spill it? Would this be Joy all over again?

Finally the stopper slides through, and I hold the vial under my nose.

I suppose I've been conditioned to expect an aloof attitude from people and things of luxury-- a snobbish stance that questions my right to partake. But what wafts up to meet my nostrils was so friendly, so glad to greet me, I wonder if I'm imagining things. This isJoy all right; not Jean Patou's version, but the real thing. Who am I to argue?

I place my fingertip over the mouth of the vial, tip it, touch the perfume to the base of my throat, restopper the vial, and wait to see what will happen.

Over the next fifteen minutes, PI enters my aura and just-- proliferates. From a single point of contact on my throat, it seems to expand, multiply, fill my etheric body like helium. Sounds hippy-dippy? I agree. But I can't deny what it does for my energy. I have experienced the same effect when I've worn a particular quartz crystal next to my skin-- a thrum of electricity all through me, as if I've just plugged into a hidden power source. Although my morning began with various anxieties and tests of my patience, I now feel calm and grounded, all my tiny pinhole leaks repaired.

When you encounter it, you may be as incredulous as I am now. But there it is. So synchronized doI feel to Puredistance after half an hour that I forget I'm simply -- what do you call it? -- wearing a perfume.

Yet PI is a perfume. And what a perfume-- one of the loveliest I've had the pleasure to meet. Beginning with an awe-inspiring virtual sunrise composed of citrus-blossom notes, it wends its way slowly and meditatively through a garden of cream and butter-yellow flowers before coming to rest on a tender chord of musk. And the cassis? Irreproachable. PI contains blackcurrant the way a properly-mixed kir cleaves to the ratio of one-tenth crème de cassis to nine-tenths dry white wine. The result: crisp and sparkling, yet graceful and restrained. The implied presence of the round, ripe, glossy blackcurrant is far more effective than any crass surfeit of the fruit. (Got that, Thierry Mugler?)

Works of art perform many useful services for mankind, the greatest of which may be to liberate our emotions. Rare may be the perfume that accomplishes this feat; once encountered, it forces a shift in belief. I might have held PI at a skeptical distance if I had not experienced it for myself. Now, like one who has met the Buddha on the roadside, I understand why such great lengths have been traveled to present this fragrance to the world. It is precious. It is powerful. It goes beyond mere perfumery and enters the realm of the numen, the mana, the eudaimon.

I'll leave you with the one tiny word that changed a great man's fate forever. Is it any wonder he found it in an art gallery? Let him tell the story:

…I saw this ladder on a painting leading up to the ceiling where there was a spyglass hanging down. It’s what made me stay. I went up the ladder and I got the spyglass and there was tiny little writing there. You really have to stand on top of the ladder -- you feel like a fool, you could fall any minute -- and you look through and it just says "YES"…

Well, all the so-called avant-garde art at the time and everything that was supposedly interesting was all negative, this smash-the-piano-with-a-hammer, break-the-sculpture boring, negative crap. It was all anti-, anti-, anti-. Anti-art, anti-establishment. And just that “YES” made me stay in a gallery full of apples and nails instead of just walking out….

--John Lennon, describing his first encounter with the artist Yoko Ono, from a 1980 Playboy interview with journalist David Sheff

Scent Elements: Tangerine blossom, cassis, neroli bigarade, magnolia, rose wardia, jasmine, mimosa, amber, vetiver, white musk, and a mystery substance known as "parmenthia" about which I have been unable to find any information whatsoever, being that it never appears in anything but Puredistance ad copy and related reviews. Being an fan of Avatar, I like to think parmenthia only grows on Pandora, and is the "active ingredient" that fills this perfume with Eywa.)

#puredistance i #puredistance #perfume review #parfümieren

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