Sottosopra

One side, one edge, no way off.

A strip of paper with one end turned through 180 degrees and joined to the other has a single surface. One circuit of it arrives back at the starting point inverted. Nothing was climbed over and nothing was crossed. In Italian the word means upside down.

Bergamot and lemon are lively at the front, mint and plum spicy behind them. Then it goes watery and rarefied, and the perception distorts around a gap where the middle ought to be. The space that opens there is oniric, and the flow through it is new every time. Ambergris and frankincense come back warm and welcoming. Leather and moss settle underneath and outline a safe port.

Silvio Levi writes a story and then has it translated into smell. A Milanese organic chemist who left pharmaceutical research to take over the family business, Levi created Pitti Immagine Fragranze and then Esxence, coordinated and published the translations of Guy Robert and Maurice Maurin, and works with Mark Buxton, Maurizio Cerizza and Arturetto Landi among them. The text comes first every time, and the materials are chosen to carry it.

Every release also has music written for it. At the start of the project the composer Philip Abussi was handed the fragrances anonymously, without the name, the briefing or the ingredients, and asked only for the sensations; the inspirations came afterwards, and Abussi had caught every one. Each bottle ships wound in a telegraphic stripe of paper carrying the text the fragrance came from, with a red ribbon tied on by hand.