We’ve all smelt a thousand “beachy” fragrances – the ones that smell like high summer, of citrus fruits, sparkling ocean waters, fresh sea breezes, of coconuts and white sands. They’re fresh, bright and beautiful, beloved for good reason!
But what does the beach smell like at low tide when massive tangles of seaweed have been left behind on the beach? What does the beach smell like at midnight? When a storm hits and the ocean becomes dark and treacherous? In the middle of winter? Those questions have been answered by Heretic Parfum’s brand new release: Black Salt.
After all, the ocean is a graveyard in a lot of ways. As long as it has existed, it has swallowed ships whole, devoured the lost and the damned, and sung lullabies of ruin in its ceaseless tide.
All sailors fear the ocean as much as they revere it, and know that it isn’t always postcard pretty.
THE INSPIRATION
Douglas Little, the genius perfumer behind Heretic Parfum, had always wanted to distill the essence of the beach in a fragrance, but of course he was never going to do it in a predictable way! Black Salt is a beachy fragrance for the alternatives and goths amongst us, for those who prefer their coastlines windswept and slightly haunted – scented with shipwrecked letters and fog horns heard from unmarked shores. For those who go to the beach not to swim, but to gaze at the ocean horizon existentially.
THE NOTES
Top: Black Pepper, Lime, Tangerine, Eucalyptus
Middle: Jasmine Sambac, Water Lily, Turkish Rose, Smoked Sea Salt
Base: Seaweed, Labdanum, Petrichor
THE SCENT OF BLACK SALT
For lovers of Heretic’s Limited Edition release, Nosferatu, you will find the opening of Black Salt kind of similar – it’s damp, wet, and cold feeling. After it wears for a bit though, you pick up the smoked salt, seaweed, and eucalyptus, which make the fragrance feel distinctly oceanic, but in a realistic, not idealised way.
That said, the fragrance gets more and more pleasant as you wear it, like a warm wind blowing in from a different direction, the tide washing away old seaweed, bringing instead the scent of ozonic flower petals.
WHAT BLACK SALT CONJURES UP FOR US
Black Salt is such an evocative scent, and there are so many scenes and stories it brings to mind for us.
It could easily be the scent of The Odyssey’s sirens – who sound sweet to the ears but were really something a little more sinister and unsettling up close.
It could be redolent of the Regency era doctors who prescribed seaside stays for melancholy and hysteria – walks along cold, pebbly, English beaches under black parasols.
It might remind you of going to the beach at night, swims in black water under the light of the moon.
Whatever it brings up for you, this fragrance will move you in one way or another – and that’s what Heretic’s fragrances do best, we think!
