Bloody Mary Parfum

Withered roses in the hair, and the gallows in view.

A queen sitting alone under a crown that will not wash clean. The shadows keep whispering betrayal and keep showing the faces, all the souls spent on one ruthless run at power. The gallows are in view, a grim testament to that reign. Redemption was the point of the last years, but it was the innocent doing the haunting, and their whispers only got louder.

Pomegranate leads, juicy and airy and faintly metallic. Black currant and carnation sharpen the red behind it. Rose and tuberose bloom through the middle, jasmine and myrrh blurring into them until nothing is separable, incense threading the whole thing. Leather takes it down warm and worn, patchouli and dark wood under that. The liquid is dyed red and may lighten in direct sun.

Dark Tales began as a home hobby in Moscow in July 2019 and now works out of a studio and laboratory on Kungsgatan in Uppsala, Sweden. Arina P. Franzén founded it and composes everything in it, having come to fragrance out of history, psychology and biographical writing. Some things are too atmospheric to describe in words. Some memories do not speak, they smell, and that is the whole argument for the house.

Every release is built as a place rather than as a pleasant thing to wear. If one is named for an old library it has to smell like an old library, down to the dust and the slowed time. The work is handmade in small batches, roughly eighty percent natural, and it runs from luminous florals through smoky woods and resinous dark to industrial gourmand. None of it was made to disappear politely into a room.