Neroli Animalis

A freshness built to give way.

Citrus first, a flight of it, orange blossom close behind. Then the brightness drains off by degrees, and what comes up underneath is a grey amber accord and an animalic one, both declared as accords rather than left to be assumed. Geranium and petit grain hold the middle where the turn happens.

Clair obscure, and the light half is the shorter half. Benzoin takes the end, resinous and low, and keeps it there through the day.

Maison Incens is a French house built out of a book. Philippe Constantin was born in Cameroon to a French father and a Moroccan mother, grew up in Casablanca, and went to France at eighteen to study economics and international law. The plan was an international organisation and work for people in need. Meeting Jean Claude Gigodot ended that. The house is named for Constantin's father, who left behind a compilation of paintings on leather and stories told in smell.

The releases are the olfactory signature of that book. Each belongs to an opus in the story of Artganis, an unknown civilisation whose life is ruled by smell. The Artganians travel and bring back what they find, and the opuses follow them: their own endemic essences, then the Morocco they settled in, then the divinatory arts they watched, then the legendary earthly materials themselves.