Yard

The storm has gone through the vegetable garden.

Something close to a greenhouse: soaked ground, wet grass, and air that has nowhere to go. Petrichor is rain on dirt and nothing more. Tomato leaf gives the green a bitter stem edge, and wet florals go slack against it.

Citrus flashes once and is gone. The wind broke stems in the plants; petals were crushed underfoot on the way out. A sneaky cucumber-melon drink fades in and out of that, cold and sweet and the only thing here carried out rather than grown. Vetiver goes under everything, spicy and earthy.

Escapist advertising promises far-flung places, and Domestica has no argument with the fun of that. In lieu of it, this house treats a bottle as a vessel for taking the domestic world along, and builds its fragrances out of ordinary rooms and back gardens. The artist and writer Jenny Odell suggests escaping laterally, towards each other, and that is the escape on offer here.

Marty Schissler and Alvaro Lozano co-founded the project, which is formulated, designed and packaged in Chicago. Schissler is self-taught and makes the fragrances; Lozano is a visual artist and shapes the material world of Domestica. The name was Björk's working title for Vespertine, and the debut collection is named for confabulation, the memory error in which a brain honestly fills its own blanks. Honest lying, and the trio explores letting smell do it.