1472: Of Life After Life
This Paradise is not intended here to be the scent of a place, nor that of an idea - it is not intended to be the image of a reality from above. Paradise is this thrill, this swarming of colors, this chirping of all the birds of Earth and Sky, this trembling of the soul that realizes that love begets love.
Purgatory takes on the air of an anti-Babel where the sins of the world are purified. It is the spring in the middle of the desert, the shade in the middle of the heat, the hint of peace that seizes the heart in the middle of the night. It is the fragrance of the tension of those who try to be better, of the tears that purify the soul, of a heart lightened by the wrongs one admits to, and the ones one forgives.
It's the scent of an intensity, of a violence, of an inescapable and unceasingly repeated second, of an eternal ascent towards an ecstasy that one never reaches. Hell is the scent of a state, of this shift from humanity to animality, from civility to bestiality, of the moment when the being, reduced to its most primary impulses, allows itself to be submerged by its senses.
This date, the earliest in the Histoires de Parfums collection, is that of the first edition of one of the most beautiful and influential works of mediaeval poetry: The Divine Comedy. Written by Dante Alighieri, this work, divided into three books -Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso- is a long metaphor on Good and Evil, on sin and virtue, faith and faithlessness – more than anything, it is an exploration if not an introspection on the reality of salvation. Taking a spin on Dante’s masterpiece, 1472 imagines, not an ascent to Heaven, but a slow and luscious descent to Hell – to discover that Hell is the place where gluttony and lust come together in their sultriest form.
Opening on a blindingly white accord of Artemisia, Rosemary and a playful solar accord reminiscent of golden sunrays, it takes you through Purgatory, arched over a magnificent Jasmine Sambac Absolute, of utmost purity. The sweetness of Cinnamon then flares up and introduces a base of devilishly treacly Rum Absolute, its molassey and woody scent melding with the carnal purr of an Ambergris base.
Vividly clear, delightfully androgynous, at once sweet and woody, floral and spicy, 1472 is a veritable journey that will take you to olfactory depths and heights in the tradition of our creations.
It is the scent of fleeing seconds and unquenched desires that morph into a wild, exhilarating passion; the scent of love teetering on the brink of addiction, of elegance on the brink of vanity, it is also the scent of those terrestrial sparks of joy that, for the span of a second, give a glimpse of what Eternity, whether good or evil, feels like…
It is the scent of fleeing seconds and unquenched desires that morph into a wild, exhilarating passion; the scent of love teetering on the brink of addiction, of elegance on the brink of vanity, it is also the scent of those terrestrial sparks of joy that, for the span of a second, give a glimpse of what Eternity, whether good or evil, feels like…
