Just Like Honey

Melody, fuzz and warmth.

Just Like Honey takes its name and mood from the Jesus and Mary Chain track — a wall of sound, fuzzed and warm, built to wash over the wearer the way the song does. Honey sits at the center, thick and warm, tangled with tobacco and patchouli. Myrrh, styrax, and labdanum bring the resinous depth; osmanthus and rose geranium soften it with a floral edge underneath.

Maher Olfactive is the work of Shawn Maher. The wish to make without restrictions on budget or materials led to this house. Olfactory art for art's sake: classic materials reframed in a way that presents them with a new sense of wonder. Behind the releases: a creek in the woods behind a grandmother's house south of Saint Louis, a sailors' saying about the sky, a line of T.S. Eliot's, the words painted under Magritte's pipe, a song of The Jesus and Mary Chain's.

Among the materials: osmanthus absolute taken by some of its less celebrated sides, its sweet, rich side made richer still through an oil made from lavender flowers alone, so none of the camphor of the stems comes with it; a coffee tincture Maher made from a locally roasted Yirgacheffe; and pipe tobacco and whiskey, not truly the things themselves but reproductions of them, extractions and distillations.