Life of the Party

The hour before going out, when the night ahead still might change everything.

The year was 2020, a long awaited Los Angeles trip had just fallen through, and what came out of it runs on teenage naivety and a head full of John Hughes montages. Music carries through the cool tiled walls of a bathroom while somebody gets ready.

Citrus arrives cold and bright, lemon over ice in a tall glass. Orange flower and jasmine sambac absolute widen it out, full and golden, with a green thread of cardamom underneath. Sandalwood comes in creamy and low, gold rather than woody.

Clara Weale makes Early Modern by hand in Glasgow, Scotland, in batches small enough to count. The approach is playful.

The work is openly concerned with materiality. Materials are named for what they physically are rather than dressed up, and each release keeps paring itself back toward its most gestural form.

What she is after is recognition without a source, the sense of having smelled something before without being able to say where.