Seahorse from Zoologist is a sunny evocation of the sea, celebrating the myriads of colour and texture of a coral reef garden. It has a floral tone, but this is treated with citrus, herbal, and cool spicy notes to create a complete picture. It dares to envisage a bursting white garden of blooms – solar floral notes that scintillate in the sunlight with heady aroma. Against the flows of cool seawater, it might remind you of the nicest days at the beach, the wind collecting and carrying scent on its voyage, calming the effect of persistent sunlight. It is the best of our happiest beach memories; generous, easy to love, and undemanding.
Towards realism, Heeley’s Sel Marin offers the most naturalistic rendition from amongst the aquatic category, and offers the miracle of pristine ocean water – a languid and salty seaside fantasy in scent. Touched up with faint musks and clean woods, this is an aquatic fragrance that leads the charge with refreshing citrus notes. Acqua di Scandola by Parfum d’Empire offers a similar interpretation with incredible richness, and utilises a bespoke algae molecule for incredible realism - capturing the turquoise blue sea in this rocky Corsican inlet which gives this fragrance its name. A touch of animal gives depth and potency to this incredible aquatic.
The Mariner’s Rhyme (Francesca Bianchi) conjures an image of the iodine sea with a sharp edge of aldehydes and briny ambergris, while oakmoss evoke the mineral slick of oyster shells as well as the darkest parts of the ocean floor. Bianchi relies on floral materials - namely her signature blend of iris, incense, and animalics - to create opacity and thickness, a dustiness that works so well in this unusual interpretation of an aquatic scent. The result is beguiling - a true tempest of a sea scent.
And in Every Storm a Serenade, the aquatic is approached through a woody vector - a combination of vetiver and spruce, sharpened with eucalyptus. Buried amongst this foliage of aromatic and smoky woods is a heart of colone, offering a familiar aquatic thump that is slightly sweet and even fruity. Every Storm is a seashack pelted by thumps of waves that seemingly swallow whole, a structure that has endured season upon season - rain, hail, and shine. Finally, Megamare by Orto Parisi is best described as a sublime thunderstorm: an intense aquatic of waves and enveloping sea mist with a turbulent core of amber and musk. It is powerful and impersonal, its melange of musky notes for a surface that is cool to the touch, like metal coated in frost.
