Tepidarium

The warm room, where everyone stayed.

Roman bathhouses ran hot to cold: the caldarium for the hot bath, the frigidarium for the cold plunge, and between them a great central hall. Patrons spent most of their time in that middle room, chatting amiably.

The holiday it maps onto has the same shape. Sun on skin, a hammock going slowly back and forth, a cocktail by the sea or at the poolside, and an afternoon nobody has decided about yet. Reassuring, warm and sweet, and positive about all of it. Lemon and grapefruit come first. Rum and pina colada turn caramelised over them. Green tea and vetiver run underneath and keep the sweetness from setting.

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.