Swanstone Reverie

An unseen orchestra is tuning somewhere.

I want to remain an eternal mystery to myself and others. A ghostly dinner party behind the velvet curtains of Neuschwanstein, from King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the Swan King. The long table gleams. Crystal coupes fizzing, silver swans across the linen, candles guttering in the draft off the secret corridors.

Candied violet is the sweet part and champagne is the cold part, and rhubarb cuts across both, tart and stalky. Green basil keeps a thread of green in it. Then it softens. An accord of feathers, orris powdery and cool, lily heavy, leather supple enough to read as a glove and not a saddle. Smoked woods and ambergris sit low, and cold stone runs mineral under the waltzes that never quite end.

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.