So what’d be your Summer in a Bottle?

[full_metal_ox]

Prompted by flamingsword‘s post here: https://smellsgood.dreamwidth.org/51602.html. The same stipulations apply: time and expense are no object, and your creative olfaction reigns supreme.

So what would your Summer in a Bottle be like? What would it contain? Would it be an olfactory postcard? A love letter to a person—flesh-and-blood or fictional? An abstract fantasia? A snapshot of a memory? A simple collection of all the things you happen to like about summer?

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Something with nectarine and apple notes, maybe. Something floral. And there's a scent that I haven't managed to track down yet that smells like Grandma's front yard. So I guess a collection.

[full_metal_ox]

I have at least one Concept: straightforward heavy rose, coupled with maritime salt and ozone; the name would be ΑΦΡΟΣ (Aphros—Greek for “seafoam”), and the synaesthetic color a transparent neon-red-to-aqua gradient. (This of course evokes Aphrodite’s birth from the sea, but also the summer trimester that I lived in a dorm whose air conditioning had given up the ghost; I coped in part by taking cool showers using the fancy fragrant glycerine soaps available from a local (and long defunct) shop; the lilac, patchouli, and sandalwood were also outstanding.)

[chestnut_pod]

I would want it to smell like the summertime hills where I grew up -- dried grasses like sweet hay, a hint of clean dust, and just a smidge of lakewater to round things out. A real atmospheric. If Fantôme's Vasilisa were less sweet, it would be close.

[flamingsword]

Mine would be a love letter to the summer in my twenties when I fell in love with my ex and moved out of my mother’s house. Bulgarian rose absolute for the first bouquet I was ever given, fresh oranges shared with friends, pine and sawdust of new furniture, the subtle petrichor of summer storms, and a drop of cinnamon for the giddy heat of new love.