yasmin has rated 3 fragrances ★★★★★ stars.
Longevity
The lifetime of a perfume, or how long the scent noticeably lingers upon the skin.
Sillage
The trail of a perfume, or the wake a scent leaves as its wearer moves through the world.
Bottle
The vessel of a perfume, or how utilitarian/decorative the container of a perfume is.
the garden
main accords:
- yellow floral
- tropical
- fresh
- woody
- conifer
notes
top notes:
- ylang-ylang
- bamboo
- pine needles
middle notes:
- pincushion moss
- fire
base notes
- pine resin
- white honey
- pineapple
weak o——o——o——O——o long-lasting
intimate o——o——o——O——o far-reaching
simple o——o——o——o——O ornate
you sit alone on a bench and imagine lanterns wafting gently across the water. ripples of light. late afternoon casts a gauzy glow over everything—the stone sculptures and wooden gateways so sharp earlier in the day blurred at the edges. notes of pine needles, balsamic and sharp, and something sweeter, darker, honeyed underneath: resin. living in this country, you have grown accustomed to celebrating customs your own ancestors never did, never even dreamed of. will the spirits drift back home upon that synthetic stream? carving through this pineapple-speckled land? wet mulch, the tea-like scent of ylang-ylang. you think of all those who stood here before, so many oceans away from the land of their birth. of the plants that were brought over and coaxed into taking root among native flora, indistinguishable to the untrained eye. and now, you—murmuring a prayer and listening to the leaves rustle, as though in response. / ★★★★★
Photographs by and courtesy of Z. Yasmin Waheed.
Top notes from left to right: ylang-ylang, bamboo, and pine needles. Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC by 4.0.
Digital Commonwealth. Image courtesy of the Digital
Commonwealth and Wikimedia Commons, CC by 4.0.
the courtyard
main accords:
- white floral
- tropical
- ozonic
- woody
- powdery
notes
top notes:
- gardenia
- rainwater
- bermuda grass
middle notes:
- mangrove bark
- mulch
base notes:
- chalk
weak o——o——o——o——O long-lasting
intimate o——o——O——o——o far-reaching
simple o——o——O——o——o ornate
powder-yellow, powder-pink. the asphalt damp still with leftover hurricane rain. at the entrance of the courtyard a white-flowered shrub keeps watch and bows her dew-heavy head. this is the space you spend most of your afternoons, the stage upon which a hundred childhood dramas have played out. you gather your friends from the neighborhood to romp like clumsy maenads. tired of hopscotch, one of them sits at a shallow basin and crushes petals, stirring them with a fraying stick, as the ancients must have done. the scent of gardenia at your chalk-daubed wrists, so richly fragrant your head spins, wafts down the canal and towards the tangled thatch of soft damp bark. they say smell is one of the first senses to go but you know, with a certainty that eclipses all other convictions, that this one will stay with you. you will search for it in every shaded courtyard you walk into for the rest of your life; you will constantly come up short. / ★★★★★
Top notes from left to right: gardenia, rainwater, and bermuda grass. Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC by 4.0.
Digital Commonwealth. Image courtesy of the Digital
Commonwealth and Wikimedia Commons, CC by 4.0.
the beach
main accords:
- marine
- sand
- earthy
- fresh
- animalic
notes
top notes:
- seawater
- oat
- palm leaf
middle notes:
- vanilla
- seagrape
base notes:
- algae
- musk
weak o——o——o——O——o long-lasting
intimate o——o——o——o——O far-reaching
simple o——O——o——o——o ornate
you watch the same beach you’ve always gone to change over time. first the people and then the land. the sea oats sway gently upon the dunes, bundled into their protected zone by twine like a rustic bouquet. your skin perfumed with that familiar half-sweet mineral scent, grain browned under the blazing florida sun. you think of getting up and instead sink back into the sand, which feels fine, sparse in a way it once did not. the world grows warmer around you, grows warmer behind your back. when you turn to the waves you know in your heart the red tide is coming—you can already smell its bitter edge. ★★★★★
Photographs by and courtesy of Z. Yasmin Waheed.
Top notes from left to right: seawater, oat, and palm leaf. Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC by 4.0.
I have always been interested in the mediums which we imbue with memory and meaning—lately those have been olfactory memory, online consumption archives, and my own beloved haunts. Fragrance enthusiast websites tend to follow a format which identifies a particular fragrance’s main accords, perfumer, and top, middle, and base notes & then offers a space for reviews and thoughts. Many of these reviews come across as not merely utilitarian and informative but incredibly intimate and poetic glimpses into strangers’ lives and experiences. The select spots of personal and cultural significance around Miami capture their fragrances via historically-informed prose poetry, identifying each location’s accords and note and then reviewing it through melding my own memories with the colonial histories that make up Miami’s history, landscape, and, both native and recently introduced.
Perfumery is a historic and ancient art and practice; online consumer reviewing is a mundane mainstay of the digital world that can be pushed beyond the boundaries of merely aiding other potential shoppers and into the realm of creative self-expression and memory archiving. The two merge to capture the nuances of my home in Florida Water, titled after a vintage eau de cologne associated with the culture of Florida that was, in fact, neither conceptualized nor produced in the state.
