Maître du Mystère

A trove of papers, and what stayed on them.

Harry Houdini, the most famous man in the world at the height of the stage act. Straitjackets. A Siberian prison car. Bess assisted, the Romanovs came to watch, and a crusade went out against fraudulent mediums and psychics. The great magician could escape from anything, and some say the greatest escape is still to come. Death came on Halloween night, 1926, and seances are still held.

The blend came out of the smell left on a trove of papers and books. Chai tea and bergamot start it, spiced and bright at once. Peru balsam and smoke sit heavy behind that, resinous and sooty. Coffee runs bitter, oud drier and older, and tonka bean and cedarwood close it warm. The balsam settles into reddish flecks in the bottle.

Immortal Perfumes is a one-person house in Seattle, run since 2012 by JT Siems, who writes every formula and makes every bottle by hand in small batches. The subjects come from books and from history: writers, artists, historical figures. A vampire story that beat Dracula to print by twenty-six years. A Bavarian king's midnight banquets. The smell left on a magician's own papers.

An archive, not a department store counter, and it is run that way. Email is answered and orders are packed by the same person who blends them. The formulas are jojoba and alcohol, essential oils and aromachemicals, and the synthetics in them get a long plain-language defence on the house's own site instead of being kept out of sight. Nothing in the line is made from an animal, and every formula is original.