‘Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart,
lie still!
O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come not with such despondent answering!’
(From ‘The Burden of
Itys’ by Oscar Wilde)
Dryad is a pagan thing, rooty, foliate and spellbound, forged in the
crucible of the New Forest, an ancient hunting ground stained with blood and
druidic oblations, trees splashed with vital fluids offered up for prosperity,
fertility, sex, weather, crop life and safety. This is where you will find Liz
Moores one of the most artistic and talented perfumers currently working in
contemporary perfumery. Like an increasingly small number of independent makers
like Bruno Fazzolari, her good friend Antonio Gardoni, Mandy Aftel, Hans
Hendley, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz and John Biebel, Liz is responsible for
everything in regards to her perfume house Papillon Perfumery, from the sourcing
of materials, tincturing and filtering to filling samples, bottling, packaging
and promotion.
I think Dryad is the closest thing we will get
to a confession from perfumer Liz Moores as to her true desirous state. A
desire perhaps sometimes to walk out into her beloved forest and be swallowed
up, consumed by the foliage, roots and buds. She is many things, sensual forest
dweller, mother, wife, lover, voluptuary, businesswoman, realist, role model,
fierce friend and emotive animal whisperer. Owls, rabbits, cats, dogs, pythons
and I imagine anything really with wings, claws and fangs falls under the
enchantment of Liz Moores.
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| Liz 'Dryad' Moores |
I have loved Liz’s work from the first moment I smelled Tobacco Rose, her third Papillon creation launched in 2014. The unfolding of rosaceous wax and carmine excretions mesmerised me. Anubis her precious first creation was a startling and passionate debut, a perfume imbued with something intangible, a purity of intent, yet oozing oriental sensuality and an aura of hard graft and accomplishment. But that thrashed rose smelled like bloodstained skies studded with pollen-weary bee stars. My bottle has simmered in the darkness of my study and has become more waxen and lipsticked. Not polite glossy lipstick, but that sanguine overkill dragged off with the back of a hand in the glare of a neon club bathroom as walls sweat and bounce.
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| Foxy's Tobacco Rose (Image©TSF) |
Then came Salome, the candlelit disturbance, whispering words of persuasive pornography. A unsettling hit for Liz, redolent of private, urgent sex and things deemed to too daring to share outside a shattered bedroom. At times it seemed too too genital, too rutting to flout in public places. Yet something in Salome clicked in so many of us, that animalic sliver of us that always denies watching porn or potentially cheating on lovers. It is one of the few seriously erotic perfumes made in the last twenty years. The trick is that each of us feels immensely special in it, as if Liz had created something bespoke and confidential that we alone can revel in.
