MEM

A very beautiful fragrance. Slightly sweet. Nothing off-putting or out of place. I'm reminded of Aeon as I smell this. A definite love for both.

4/10

Let's analogize. Humankind's first attempt at wearing scent might have been mashing flowers or herbs right into your skin, or wearing single distillations thereof; these could be thought of as the petroglyphs of perfume. The introduction of egg tempera to painting could be the equivalent of synthetic molecules arriving on the scent scene in the 19th century; now you can achieve complex, lush, vividly dimensional effects on a surface or in the air. And artistry evolves. MEM seems to me to be a Paul Klee in scent-- specifically the more geometric paintings like Ancient Harmony, or May Picture, or even Castle and Sun. The scent's notes are Klee's coloured squares or rectangles. There are many of them, and not unfamiliar in themselves, but the way they are combined and juxtaposed makes for a breathtaking new reality. MEM is a very modern perfume. It is not romantic. It does not bring to mind boudoirs, or seraglios, or long walks in a forest. MEM seems to me a perfume that would appeal to philosophers, and reward them. This perfume seems not only to want to converse with you, but also be capable of a courteous intellectual argument. I believe that how you feel about MEM will be determined by how you feel about the other modern arts. Addendum at 30 September 2018: Another filter... if you enjoy Roger Penrose's non-repeating tile patterns, you'll probably enjoy this too.

This is one of two fragrances, along with MAAI, that I've tried from this house and while I think the limitations of MAAI are still largely present in MEM, this is the far more enjoyable of the two to my nose. Like its sibling, I believe MEM makes the mistake of assuming complexity is an innately virtuous thing for a perfume, which perhaps is only true given the commercial background of ultra-simplicity MEM finds itself in. The undirected nature of the composition I think is betrayed by the curious similarity of MEM to MAAI - they're both so complex and involve so much stuff they've somehow landed in similar olfactory territory, like mixing all paints and ending up with variations on brown. In my opinion MEM succeeds where MAAI fails, however, by virtue of its beautifully audacious lavender note. Like the arms of a large and vigorous mother, this slightly mentholated herbal note is able to grab the rest of the squirming composition, which is burning with spices, ambers and animalics, and gives a background and context for them to wriggle in. I think MEM would have actually benefitted from going even harder still on the lavender note, but what it has just about manages to keep the scent coherent... barely. As with MAAI, this is a perfume for someone with an excellent nose, capable of dissecting compositions of unparalleled complexity and giving reason and order to them. For me, plebian that I am, both MEM and MAAI are simply too chaotic for me to enjoy. Sometimes the absence of a given note is as important as the inclusion of another, and I think these perfumes are very illustrative of this thought.

This is my favorite scent of all time, as I'm convinced it has sentience. Spraying it on, it feels like a living thing on your skin. You feel its presence much more than you smell its notes. It's not difficult! It's not cerebral! It's the pure, emotional pleasure of being alive on a wild planet.