I wanted to try Zoologist’s Bat and Hummingbird for a while; they sounded pretty bonkers to be honest
but in a textured and fertile way. They seemed daring and artistic, heartfelt
and whimsical. I liked the allure of the dandified steampunky personifications
of the scents gazing mysteriously from the boxes like animal Mona Lisas. I
really wanted Bat quite badly
actually, I’d read amazing things about this cavey, funky furred olfactory
collaboration between Zoologist Creative and Brand Director Victor Wong and
independent perfumer and bat
echolocation specialist Dr Ellen Covey of Washington State University. I kinda
knew it would be fabulous. Weird but Attenborough fabulous.
 |
| Foxy's Bat |
Recently I’ve been writing
less. It’s the way it is. But the writing when it comes is more dense and
passionate; it must be driven and inspired by olfaction that really intrigues
me, moves me or delivers something else in terms of experience. Yes, there will
always be houses, brands and noses I adore and report on. I am loyal and love
to watch development, reflection, adaptation and genuine emotional shift.
Things don’t always have to be magnificent or gloriously luxurious, but they
must be intriguing, invite desire, repeat visitation and scented conversation.
I must want it on my skin and want to revel in persuasive brilliance.
 |
| Victor Wong of Zoologist Perfumes |
Somehow I knew Bat would be all this. I chatted to
Victor through (for me) night electronica; Zoologist is based in Canada and I said
hello, wondering if there were any UK stockists. It turned out there weren’t so
I purchased Bat through picturesque
Zoologist website and waited. End of the week, the kindest, sweetest gesture that
moved me immeasurably, was Victor’s gift of a bottle of Hummingbird nestled next to my purchased Bat in a speedily delivered parcel. Gorgeous packaging. I set the
boxes down, a haughty aristocratic bat and Jane Austenesque hummingbird peering
coyly and enigmatically from their black, Victoriana-style livery.
 |
| Beaver, Panda & Rhino |
Now, when Zoologist Perfumes
first appeared in 2014 with Panda,
Rhinoceros and Beaver I will
admit I was a tad sceptical, whilst the packaging and beautiful illustrations of
the perfumes by Daisy Chan, who is one of Victor’s co-workers at Ganz, a toy
company where he is a Senior 3D video game artist in his day persona were
alluring and fun, the brand concept seemed a little gimmicky and simplistic.
This turned out to be an erroneous reading of a heartfelt and charmingly
conceived brand. I had some samples of Panda
and Rhinoceros, both created by US
based perfumer Paul Kiler. I liked the aquatic, jadeite grace of Panda, it’s not my thing, but the
execution is clean and thorough. Rhinoceros
is a mucky leather, bone dry, a suggestion of the thick animal hide pushing and
scraping its way through arid savannah bush. I wasn’t keen on the development
of this slightly off balance composition; I feel the herbs and immortelle are
just tipped over the edge by the rather uncomfortable bitter smoky facet in the
base. Rather than the sweeping aromatics of brush fire the notes seem tinged
with an unpleasant melted black rubber aroma. It’s a fleeting impression and of
course a subjective one.
When it came to sampling Beaver I was really impressed. I love
castoreum as a note in scent. Now almost always synthesised, as originally it
was obtained from the castor sacs of American beavers, it has an unparalleled
musky, woody, arid, rosaceous, skanky aroma that many people find very sensual.
Beaver is a strikingly dry and
aerated hymn to this most bizarre and erotic of perfumery materials. A synth
version obviously but is smells gorgeously well dressed, feral and rude. It is a
beaver chewing down trees for a treasured fuggy insulated lodge. A scent of
unexpected corners and edges that talented British perfumer Chris Bartlett has
mixed with choice musks and sweet bestial castoreum. The use of linden blossom
is arresting, it acts like air-con, breezing a gentle path through the undergrowth
and fumy atmospherics of Beaver’s
rather unsettling later stages.
It is technically a very
dapper scent, the abstracted fresh air, ash, smoke and undergrowth effects are
not merely dazzlenotes, but carefully constructed aromachemical fictions used
to support Beaver’s chewy leather
dexterity and whiffy impact. Many fragrances use castoreum with reckless
abandon, just to conjure up an overwhelming porno-excremental backhander. Chris
Bartlett has adroitly avoided this all too obvious and frankly rather tedious
route by setting his still undeniably animalic Beaver in a blithe, vivid landscape of powdered earth, clean air,
sun on water, trees whispering on smoke-tinted breezes and a musky intrigue of
dark, dank bed and banks. It all coalesces into a perfume of considerable skill
and unexpected charm. It has gorgeous, swelling presence on skin, not for the
faint of heart mind you, castoreum is an acquired feral taste, but revisiting Beaver for this review, I realised how
complex and balanced the mix was and how much I enjoyed Chris Bartlett’s expert
handling of the Zoologist brief.
 |
| Foxy's Bat & Hummingbird |
Bat and Hummingbird appeared in 2015, created by
dynamic US perfumers Ellen Covey and Shelley Waddington respectively. It seemed
obvious to me that this duo of perfumes was different from the original trio,
richer, more pungent, fertile and experimental. It felt to me that Victor had pondered
reactions to his line and thought very carefully about his follow up collaborators.
The fecundity and cornucopia of aromatic styles on display chez Covey’s Olympic Orchids and Waddington’s En Voyage perfume houses has earned
these creative women critical plaudits and a devoted following.
 |
| Blackbird by Ellen Covey |
Ellen Covey made the final
round of the Art and Olfaction Awards in 2014 with Blackbird, a scent of blackberries, fir and elemi and again in 2015
with her arboreal call to arms Woodcut,
an alarmingly beautiful and poignant cedar scent with a wise and wonderful
singed sugar accord burned through it as if to remind us that whilst our skins may
be decorated and enhanced, trees fall silently in distant lands that we might
exude woody sensuality, build, sit, carve, heat and power our rippling world. Woodcut took home the award in the
Artisan Category and rightly so.
 |
| Ellen, Woodcut & the Art & Olfaction kudos.... |
Olympic Orchids launched its
first fragrances in 2010. Ellen’s accidental sideways move into orchid
husbandry after a work colleague bequeathed her some plants led her into a passionate
and detailed scientific relationship with these most notoriously complex and
alluring of blooms. This preoccupation with the orchids led her into perfumery
and compositions such as Osafume, Red
Cattaleya and African Orchid. She
does hold a post at Washington State University in the Department of Psychology,
(she originally studied chemical senses, more specifically chemosensory
awareness) teaching courses on senses and perception. This lead to an interest
in hearing and very precisely and most importantly for us, echolocation in bats.
 |
Dr Ellen Covey
perfumer, creatrix, bat specialist & orchid grower |
So, Dr Ellen Covey, indie
creatrix of Olympic Orchid Perfumes, owner of Olympic Orchids orchid nursery,
bat expert and scent specialist approached Victor at Zoologist to see if he
might be interested in creating a bat-themed perfume. Ellen’s extensive
scientific experience with bats and their sensory communication systems had
allowed her to travel on a variety of field trips, experiencing a diversity of
bat habitats that have informed this most extraordinary of aromatic recipes.
From cramped eaves and claustrophobic grottoes to soaring cave cathedrals, bats
use a unique system of communication to talk to one another as they fly and
assemble or move out of caves in vast numbers. But their echolocation system is
used in its purest form to catch prey; the winged furry mammals are able to
identify insects and pinpoint distance etc by bouncing their radar-like squeaks
off insects’ bodies. A series of echoes form an exact picture in the bat’s
brain of the cricket, mayfly or moth for example winging its way through dark
space.
The fact that bats choose to
dwell in darkness and paint pictures in the dark with sound just thrills me to
foxy bits. So Bat was set in motion,
with Ellen and Victor I imagine both initially having quite different ideas
about how a bat themed scent might smell. The finished result is anomalous and wondrous,
unlike anything I have really smelled before. I have picked up on pieces of Bat in other compositions (Andrea
Maack’s soil tincture in Coven and
Josh Lobb’s hemlock/pine symbiosis in Norne
to mention a couple), but the erudition and olfactory skill that has gone into
the blending and character creation of Bat
is exemplary
 |
| Gemosmin molecule |
On first encounter Bat is quite a shock, an olfactory
landscape of seemingly discordant and inappropriate aromas for fine perfumery.
The initial hit of geosmin is outrageous, but of course perfect for this scent.
Bats love geosmin and are ultra sensitive to it; many night-blooming flowers
and cacti exude it to attract pollinators. We love it too; it is the odour of
turned earth, petrichor and rain. It was first isolated by Bush Boake Allen
(now part of IFF) and is currently synthesised. Normally used at a dilution
dosage of 0.1% Geosmin is a very powerful aromachemical, the smallest trace of
which that can have a huge impact on fragrances. I must admit to being quite
obsessed by its weird, muddy compulsion. Its effects can vary from the
tremulous promise of rain, the loamy taste of fresh beets to stale muddy water,
rumbling taps spurting brown water and the sticky manure reek of turned
topsoil.
 |
| Cave. Floor. Bats. |
In Bat, geosmin is bat breath, muddy gloom, a glittering shifting
carapace floor, dead banana and fig, chewed, digested and shit out from on
high, the mineralised odour of millennial cave walls. Ellen Covey wanted a very
deliberate overdose of geosmin to suggest this very particular assembly of
habitats she had knew well through her research and field trips. Fluttering through
her geosmin net are her beloved bats, these strange flying mammals some of us love
and some of us fear. Chiroptophobia
is the name given to the phobia of bats, derived from the Greek words cheir for hand and pteron for wing. Winged-hand;
the perfect bat description. Despite my personal abhorrence for birds, bats
don’t bother me in the slightest, I came across them a lot during my childhood
in Africa, their little foxy, canine faces, leathered frames coated in the most
tranquil, soft fur fascinated me. I always remember how immensely fragile they
seemed, their wings like warm malleable silk.
 |
| I am not afraid... |
Bat is all
about the geosmin, its particular overdosing and redolent effects on the
surrounding materials and subsequently on our senses and how we interpret the composition;
how our senses locate themselves within Ellen Covey’s complex skein of mulchy,
naturalistic olfactive experience. It’s coincidental I have just purchased
another remarkable scent that uses geosmin along with a number of other unusual
and revelatory aromachemicals such as Calypsone and Petalia. This is Hermann à mes Cotés me Paraissait Comme une
Ombre by Etat Libre d’Orange, created for them by the stylish and
stubbornly single-minded Quentin Bisch who made their enigmatic Fin du Monde and the over indulgent Ambre Impérial for Van Cleef &
Arpels. Mugler have just announced the launch in May of Angel Muse, a new reflection/interpretation of the original maltol
behemoth. Bisch is the nose for this too, a sweet honour for a young perfumer
with only a few scents under his belt. But his slick buttered popcorn accord in
Fin du Monde is to die for.
 |
Hermann à mes Cotés me Paraissait Comme une Ombre
by Quentin Bisch for Etat Libre d'Orange |
He has used geosmin very differently
in his Etat perfume. Hermann. It is a
essentially a perverted rose, slashed, shadowed and dank, carried in bloody
hand through darkness, thorns cutting, leaves and petals falling to moon
ribboned floor. Thankfully this brooding, fairy-tale scent is a return to form
for Etat Libre d’Orange after a succession of lacklustre and childish
fragrances that seemed to contradict the very foundations of the original House
message of innovation, olfactive war and anti-perfume. True Lust Rayon Violet de Ses Yeux was an uninspired mash up of Putain des Palaces and Dangerous Complicity and Remarkable
People was anything but, a flattened out champagne accord lost amid overtly
crude, uncooked spices. But Bisch has used his imagination with Hermann to suggest a savage bloom,
dripping with minerals and soil, held up to thunderous sky. Petalia is a
Givaudan molecule with a deep, rich rosaceous peony pitch to it; blending this
this with citric marine Calypsone and the mulchy, petrichor redolence of
geosmin has allowed Bisch to formulate an immensely odd and bleak bloom but one
that is compelling and gothic in tone.
Bisch’s handling of geosmin
to darken the edges, tearstain the mood of his ambitious Grimm rose. It is a
nuanced performance, strong in scent, covert and elegant in execution, suggesting
forest floor, roots, and roses torn from shadowy hollows. Ellen Covey never had
any real intention of nuance; the geosmin in Bat is a mood character, a darkening clime.
 |
Whose Banana? by Luis Alegre
(apped by TSF) |
The strong opening salvo in Bat is ripe banana and fig. I haven’t
smelled banana this good since Bertrand Duchaufour’s tropical 40s hothouse love
affair floral Amaranthine that
Penhaligon’s ruthlessly crushed into the mud some years ago with scant regard to
its beauty, citing as usual the wearisome refrain of expense and poor sales. It
is such a bloody hard note to get right, rubbery, creamy, porny and downright
rank if you’re not careful. Bertrand married it to green spiced oils and most
glorious ylang and jasmine duo, lending Amaranthine
a radiant silken boudoir aroma, laced with dirt and post-coital fumes. Ellen’s
banana note is ripe, yellow and bruised. Chewed, dropped, discarded, defecated
to the profound cave floor to rot or consumed by the glittering army of insects
and bacteria that power the cave systems.
The rootiness and resins,
smoke and earth suggest age and eroding subsystems, centuries of dripping attrition,
tree root intrigue, lianas, landslides, encroaching forests and lichen eating
and breathing in the cavernous gloom. This background is perfect for Bat, a ghostly suggestion of bats
themselves, shrouded in protective obscurity, in their colonies of thousands,
their membranous apricot-tinted wings, folded to shelter and insulate in the
clicking shadows of the caves.
Bat has
shock value; the stormburst dose of petrichor ensures I am quite obsessed by
the conjured furry world of beating, flitting, and squeaking pungent mammalian
panorama. As it opens, it becomes very dark very quickly, muddy and a little
repugnant, the slippery, tactile fruit notes jarring deliberately with the
resins and bitter vetiver. There is an undeniable bleak guano reek in the mid
to late stage of Bat that you must
embrace. It is glorious and necessary. The conflict in Bat of this feral reality, the warm army of furred mammals
assembling amid the dizzying green fizz of geosmin and decay of fruit and damp
cave walls is a swooping, turbulent journey. It will go into my Olfactory
Cabinet of Wonder with Sogno Reale by
Mendittorosa, Andrea Maack’s Wicca-bound Coven,
the green cathedrals of Norne by
Slumberhouse, Mink by Byredo, CdG’s
tape and glue stained Eau de Parfum, Vero
Kern’s salacious monumental Onda, Romanza
by Masque Milano and Fundamental
by Rubini Profumo. Ellen Covey’s innate understanding of her subjects, both pteropine
and aromatic has led her to create a perfume of divisive complexity and rare
ambience. This perfume is an ode to dense atmospheric road trips and locations,
temperatures, weather, fauna, flora, habitat and odiferous experience. It is
the most divine expression of sensual scientific endeavour.
 |
| Foxy's Hummingbird |
Hummingbird, composed
for Victor by Shelley Waddington, while completely opposite in mood and fabric
to Bat is still also a perfume of
dazzling profundity and luminous experience. Shelley is the much-lauded nose
behind En Voyage Perfumes, based in Carmel in northern California. Launched in
2011, the brand has never really appealed to me all that much, the mix of styles
and leapfrogging form genre to genre with a touch of recklessness is
entertaining but ultimately somewhat tiring. There are moments of scented impulse;
Fiore di Bellagio is a brave attempt
to tackle a wrecked vintage boudoir floral with a genuinely excellent carnation
note set amid smutty resins, creepy costus and gunshot residue of iris. A vixen
lipstick scent that smells unashamedly right. But as always with perfume, each
to their own and En Voyage doesn’t need me to wear or love its perfumes,
Shelley has fans galore.
 |
| Frida - En Voyage Perfumes |
Shelley did however really pull
it all together in 2015 with the launch of Frida,
gaining plaudits and critical acclaim from bloggers and fragrance lovers all
over the world. Essentially a heady tuberose and Champaca-drunk homage to
Mexican art, pain and eyebrow icon Frida Kahlo, Frida drips with beautifully rendered watermelon, peach and apricot
notes. The use of hibiscus, cactus flower, copal and a defiantly sweet feminine
tobacco note make Frida a fascinating
and ever shifting composition to wear on skin. It vibrates colour and urgency,
demands your attention and yet as you wear it, you feel somehow the smoke and incense
are in some ways a nod to the gods, a per
fumum offering amid the sweet bewilderment of floral fruited dazzle.
 |
| Shelley Waddington |
It is a feature of Shelley’s
undeniably joyful work that her palette of gleefully gathered materials just
sings out of bottles, off skin. There is an instantaneous recognition of
exuberance and succulent tableaux, the ingredients harmonising and infusing to
delight and beguile the senses. You feel this exuberance as soon you spray Hummingbird on the skin. Victor is very
proud of this collaboration with Shelley and so he should be. To be honest, I
had no real idea what to expect; yes I’d read the longer than average list of
notes, overflowing with fruits, florals, woods, musks and oddly worrying cream
thing. With Bat, whilst it was
magnificently surreal and unexpected, I hoped it would reek the way it did.
With Hummingbird I had images in my
head of nectarous glow, petals glittering with sun, hummingbird gorgets
refracting raspberry, emerald and blood toned light. Hum, buzz, sticky
luminescence. I couldn’t quite imagine the notes on paper coalescing into a
cogent formulation without at least some cacophony or shriek. The absolute
opposite is true in fact, some of my anticipated desires for Hummingbird exploded out of Shelley’s
lush cannonade of bravura floral technique. But no shriek, just beauty.
I need to backtrack a little
and muse on hummingbirds, after all, their nature and physiology informs the
emotional content and configuration of Shelley’s composition just as much as
Ellen’s background and expertise in bat behaviour and habitat informed her
singular formula. I will admit I not a huge fan of birds generally, not
entirely sure why, they bore me and freak me out in equal measure. Is it the
wings, the beady eyes, feathers, the weird OMG feet? Just not sure.
Hummingbirds however like birds of paradise seem rather surreal, fabricated, offbeat
and dizzying. I’m not sure I’ve really taken much notice of these tiny hovering
bird-insects before and yet I’ve seen them up close in Africa, buzzing intoxicatingly
over blood-red bell flowers in, gorging on molten nectar, their blue and rust
coloured gorgets flashing in the West African sun.
They are the world’s smallest
species of bird; in fact the Bee Hummingbird is only 5-6cm long. They have the
highest metabolism of any member of the bird family, beating their wings 50-60
times a second, driving a ferocious heartbeat and stamina. They need to consume
their own bodyweight in nectar everyday in order to maintain this punishing
existence. They are able to manoeuvre their flying forward, backwards and from
to side. All this takes a huge toll on the tiny birds. They do rest; they have
odd feet, evolved beyond walking to a continual state of being airborne, but
they need to stop, switch off. This state is called torpor, essentially a
summoned form of adapted hibernation, where the hummingbird’s bodily functions
slow down to 1/15th of its normal active state. It’s a precarious
time for the birds. Too exhausted, they fail to wake and they are at the mercy
of inclement weather and predators.
 |
Hummingbirds
adapted from
|
Hummingbirds are of course
essentially nectarivores and over time have evolved in certain global habitats
alongside certain blooms, developing peculiarities of tongue, beak and nectar
harvesting. They are odd, potentially doomed little things, usually hours from
death, unless they can ensure an adequate source of nectar. This manna is a mix
of glucose, sucrose and fructose and fuels the little humming, eternally flying
things. They do supplement this sugary, addictive regime with winged bugs for
added proteins and I guess as a touch of variety from the crack cocaine rush of
continual sugar.
They don’t sing. I found this
out during my reading, but honestly, who would have thought they had the time
or the inclination to stop, trill, chirrup etc. Far too busy staving off death.
Instead, their dazzling gorgets, the iridescent tightly overlapping breast
feathers are often dazzlingly hued in shades of ruby, malachite, azure, gold,
emerald and honeyed ochre. As they zip through sun-kissed air, these refractive
feathers glitter like red-carpet parures. They hover, dip and harvest nectar
their tiny wings vibrating, humming.
Shelley has brought her full
talent as an intuitive perfumer to bear on this ephemeral, scintillating concept,
balancing delicacy and lushness, harmonising the demands of a hugely fruity
backdrop of blushing apple, cherry and simmering plum with a vividly rendered
bouquet of honeyed blooms such as tulips, lilac, muguet, rose, violet leaf, honeysuckle,
mimosa, peony and ylang absolute. Some real, some aromachemical creations, it
doesn’t really matter, the suggestion and picaresque sleight of hand is enough.
Like the hummingbird though, Shelley’s composition darts beautifully from mood
to mood, palette-to-palette, assembling odiferous nectars, sugars and pollen to
assuage cravings and dazzle our senses.
Hummingbird
is a creamy topography of floral flicker and glow; nectarous dip and enticing
foliate fanfare. But and it’s an intriguing and important but, beneath the
undeniably and unctuous assembly, as time smears down on skin, there is an
unorthodox aromatic stain underpinning the fruity hovering celebration. It is I
think a craving for rest and safety, stillness, a nest to repose weary wings
and unconventional feet. The base of coumarin, woods and airy moss feels
entwined, the ylang and amber somehow softly glazed and precious. You need
these final offbeat tones and emotions to prevent Hummingbird collapsing into a generic wedding clutch of
overdesigned flowers. I like this suggestion of dirt, muckiness, it does have a
whiff of the unclean as the flowers fade and the fruits ripen. I am very
addicted to the oscillating density and transparency of Hummingbird, it is a piece of olfactory work that truly delights
and transports me each time I wear it.
Bat and Hummingbird mark a definite evolution
for Victor Wong and Zoologist Perfumes. Rhino,
Panda and Beaver were very good,
especially Chris Bartlett’s controlled and swanky Beaver. But Bat and Hummingbird are like works from an altered
period in an artist’s development. An exaggeration? Perhaps, but the tactile
sensuality and technical virtuosity revealed in both compositions are superlative.
They are mournful twilight vs. the ephemeral rays of dawn break. Whilst Ellen
and Shelley’s’ work seems different in style, the duo’s approach to Victor’s
brief have both used committed imaginative focus of naturalistic palettes,
olfactory hints of gothic-tinged impressionism, pointillism, Flemish genre
painting, Henri le Douanier, Edgar Allen Poe and Frida Kahlo mixed into a
impressive fusion of expertly handled raw materials, naturals, conceived
accords, molecules and flexible abstractions.
 |
Bats
adapted from
|
Ellen Covey’s dank potholey Bat interior is musty and thrillingly
weird in its enveloping furry flitting construct; discarded fruit, mineral bouquets
of guano, cave rot and warm mammalian occupancy. I am helpless in its macabre
mulchy ambience; it feels revelatory, sweetly repugnant, addictive and a
perfume I know will always make me stop and wonder, revel in its dark force.
Shelley’s glorious winged
floral Hummingbird journey is
exhaustingly lovely, skin a lush buffet of ambrosial petals, snapped stems and
oozing scattered nectar. Everything is chromatics, speed, dazzle and capture.
Then that swooning lilt into mucky rest and oddly tangled nest, heart roaring,
but roaring less, tongue and beak slick with flower blood.
Victor’s brand is a
fascinating one; the possibilities are of course endless when it comes to
choosing potential animal candidates to inspire perfumers. This will be the
relatively easy part, it will the judicious arrangement of perfumer/creator and
olfactory animal totem that will be vitally important. Zoologist will need
scent artists with flexibility, imagination and ability to think outside the
perfumed box and play with aromatic weather. There are some incredible
independent perfumers out there who I think could conjure up extraordinary
animals: elk, tigers, mongooses, cranes, flamingos, pangolins, binturongs,
gorilla etc. People like Josh Meyer of Imaginary Authors, Liz Moores of
Papillon Perfumery, Scottish perfumer Euan McCall, John Pegg of Kerosene,
Heather Sielaff of OLO and Hans Hendley of Hendley Perfumes; all of these guys
have created original textured and artistic work, reflective of themselves and landscape.
Victor’s challenge will be to
decide or imagine how the olfactory zoo and the perfumers might correlate and
produce work as good as the collection so far and in the case of Ellen Covey
and Shelley Waddington bring such personal and quirky virtuosity to perfumes
like Bat and Hummingbird.
Keep a close eye on Zoologist
perfumes and Victor Wong’s increasingly sophisticated clan of superior dapper
animals; destined to delight and fascinate us with each beautiful rendition of
tooth, claw, fur, wing, hide, beak, tail, paw and hoof. These perfumed habitats
and manifestations of animalic intent are sensational.
For more Information on Zoologist Perfumes, please click on the link below:
©TheSilverFox 02/04/2016
