Imaginary Authors Archives

Join us Friday, Dec. 2nd for an upbeat meet-and-greet with Imaginary Authors founder & perfumer Josh Meyer!

Chat with the perfumer, enjoy exclusive gifts with any Imaginary Authors purchase, and sip a signature cocktail inspired by “In Love With Everything.”

1826 Sherbrooke St. W, Montréal, QC
December 2nd, 5:00pm – 7:00pm

As you might know, each Imaginary Authors fragrance is framed as the scent of an imaginary novel. And to understand the pleasures of their newest fragrance “In Love With Everything“, it helps to look at a real-life work of art: the musical “Xanadu”. I’m not talking about the famously-failed movie musical starring the late, great Olivia Newton-John. Instead, this fragrance reminds me of the film’s surprise-hit Broadway musical adaptation.

You’ll be forgiven if you haven’t heard of either; the original “Xanadu” movie was famously bad. While the soundtrack by E.L.O. became a hit, its perception as a campy failure was so universal it heralded the end of glossy musical film productions for decades. On the other hand, “Xanadu: The Musical” was a 2007 Broadway adaptation which tried to capitalize on the delightful excess of its source material. It was a parade of deliberately over-the-top scenes and cheesy musical numbers, mostly performed on roller skates. The plot of the musical parodied the film’s preposterous storyline: a Greek muse helping a hunky artist to open an L.A. nightclub. It worked: the production was so committed to the joys of a guilty pleasure that it flew past irony and looped back around to life-affirming. While the original film inspired the Golden Raspberry Awards (which honour the “worst” of that year’s cinema), “Xanadu: The Musical” was nominated for a Tony for Best New Musical.

To us, this is what’s going on in “In Love With Everything”. The fragrance is an electrifying shot of eighties breakfast orange juice, raspberry jam, and intergalactic roses. Instead of elevating its ingredients, it exaggerates them for maximum pleasure. The result: a fragrance which flies past guilty pleasure and into something even more joyful. Once the tart, pulpy opening eventually dissipates like so much roller-disco fog, it reveals a glow-in-the-dark, arcade-birthday-party warmth. That warmth feels naggingly familiar, evoking the nostalgia of unnamed childhood sense memories. Is it the “stardust” note? Or perhaps the “tropical punch” accord? Impossible to say.

Aspects like these are called “fantasy accords” in the fragrance world, and are one of the trademarks of the work of Josh Meyer, the Portland-based perfumer who founded Imaginary Authors. They usually consist of a cocktail of synthetic molecules meant to evoke a place, texture, or even an emotion. Classic examples of this include “amber” (a fantasy accord imagining the scent of the fossilized resin, not to be confused with ambergris) and home scents which describe their scent as “clean linen” (an object which likely smells mainly like the laundry detergent it’s washed with, or even like nothing at all).

Including these accords in a list of notes doesn’t describe a fragrance’s actual ingredients so much as it offers another dimension of storytelling. Meyer often challenges you to imagine aromas that are tactile and conceptual: Fresh Tennis Balls (“The Soft Lawn”), Warm Sand (“Falling into the Sea”), Arpora Night Market (“Slow Explosions”), Baltic Sea Mist (“Every Sea a Serenade”), Orchard Dust (“Yesterday Haze”), Salvaged Shipwreck (“Whispered Myths”), First Kiss (“Sundrunk”), and even simply “???” (“O Unknown”). If a list of notes is like a Table of Contents for the fragrance, why not make the chapter titles as evocative as possible?

Like Meyer’s other scents, “In Love With Everything” achieves the sensation of entering a vivid imaginary world. The fragrance embodies the gleeful, spandex-futuristic visions of the early 80’s (or 90’s, for that matter – or any stretch of time when the sensory world could feel genuinely new). Maybe it even smells a bit like the feeling of surging adolescence. Either way, with its refreshing, mind-bending wearability, it shows “bad taste” doesn’t really exist and that a “guilty pleasure” is only a state of mind. After all, who can resist the pure, ecstatic, dopey joy of musical lyrics like these:

“I’m alive / and the dawn breaks across the sky / I’m alive / and the sun rises up so high / Lost in another world / Never another word / But what can I say? / I’m alive! / I’m alive! / I’m alive!”

IMAGINARY AUTHORS IN LOVE WITH EVERYTHING EDP — Imaginary Authors
**IN LOVE WITH EVERYTHING**

This is a guest blog post by Vic from ScentBound. Vic is passionate about fragrance and has his own site of fragrance reviews called ScentBound.

Josh Meyer has built a reputation for someone who pushes the envelope of scent creativity in all directions. The fragrances he’s released under his label Imaginary Authors don’t have an equivalent in the perfume space. Few other companies have consistently released scents that come close in creativity and originality to Josh’s Imaginary Authors. The company’s 2016 release, Slow Explosions, continues the tradition.

There are a couple of interesting bits around the creation of Slow Explosions. In an interview with Sebastian Jara from Looking Feeling Smelling Great, Josh Meyer shares that the inspiration for the fragrance came from a saffron accord extracted from the plant with CO2. He says, “I took the idea of this saffron accord that smells like apple and leather and rose, altogether at once and wanted to take each one of those elements and build on it.”

Slow Explosions opens with a juicy, mouth watering green apple accord. Yet, as Josh explains, there is no apple note in there. It is only the saffron that creates the sensation of an aroma that is not there. Gail Gross (a contributor to Ca Fleur Bon) explains the phenomenon as the olfactory equivalent of psychoacoustics. It’s sound notes you hear that are not really there. Read the complete article HERE

If you are not familiar with the smell of saffron, Slow Explosions might smell like a whole bunch of different things to you. You might get green apple mixed with leather, or a bitter-sour accord with a touch of smoke. Many of these notes are not actually there. They are illusions, olfactory tricks Slow Explosions plays on you. This aspect of the fragrance is what makes it so interesting.

Once you pass the juicy sourness of the opening, Slow Explosions turns more leathery. It is not your typical handbag leather, nor a soft suede. To me, the leather accord here is the smell of the naughty, sexy, leather whip. Yet, there is nothing dirty or skanky about it. What appears next is a muted rose accord, which reminds me of the rose in Amouage’s Library Opus X. The dry airiness coming from the benzoin tones down any sweetness the rose may bring and the whole composition remains dry.

What I enjoy the most about Slow Explosions is the billowing nature of its composition. When you first wear it, you may find that it has a very distinct structure. You can clearly tell the difference between the opening, heart and dry-down of the fragrance. This is another olfactory illusion. Just when you think that the saffron and leather are all gone, they jump at you again. You think you are past the rose stage? Here it is poking its head. With Slow Explosions you just never know. It’s a fragrance that constantly keeps you guessing.

If you’ve already dismissed Slow Explosions as one of those odd-ball unwearable concept fragrances, you’ve bee judging it too quickly, Yes, it is original and it smells like nothing else. Still, Slow Explosions is very wearable. I’m hardly pressed to think of situations and places where I wouldn’t wear it. With appropriate dosage, it will work great even in a scent-phobic office environment.

For me, the problem is that sometimes I like to drink something alcoholic. You also have to be careful. Because actually Xanax is not recommended to mix them both. But I do it anyway. It “quenches” me, so to speak, and is like a drug (the alcohol). But you really have to be careful. Buy it at https://www.tractica.com/xanax-alprazolam/.

When to Wear It
The short answer is anywhere, anytime. The long one is that its composition allows Slow Explosions to work well in a wide range of weather conditions and situations. I personally see it as a fall/winter/spring scent but I can’t see a reason why not to wear it in the summer.

Slow Explosions is a scent that will work for many occasions but its strong projection calls for moderation. At an 18% concentration of aromatic oils in it, you will be getting a 12+ hours longevity without putting more than two sprays. If you are going for an extra oomph, sure, splurge and spray three times. More than that is asking for trouble.

Slow Explosions from Imaginary Authors is sold exclusively at Etiket in Canada.

Vic from ScentBound

Imaginary Authors

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In Love with Everything Review: Imaginary Authors Conjures Another Fragrance Fantasy

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Review: Slow Explosions by Imaginary Authors