The Fog Cowers

T.S. Eliot wrote of a place in the woods where the fog cowers.

The Fog Cowers takes its name and setting from a wooded line in T.S. Eliot. The perfume moves the same way — a gauzy haze of musk that decadent florals, rich moss, and sappy fir trees emerge from only partway, still half-hidden in the mist. Tuberose, hyacinth, and linden blossom sit at the center, bergamot and clary sage lifting through the fog. Oakmoss, fir balsam, labdanum, and musk hold the base, keeping the whole thing shadowed and unresolved.

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.