Aesop fragrances Miraceti, Karst and Erémia explore ‘the poetry of space’

With the launch of three new eaux de parfums, Australian skincare brand Aēsop is sailing into the realm of the esoteric.

French nose Barnabé Fillion

What does the unknown smell like? While the question may seem to set up a philosophical, Mobius Strip-like loop that’s asking you to imagine the impossible, it’s an area that Australian skincare brand AÄ“sop has boldly sailed into with the launch of three new eaux de parfums – Miraceti, Karst and Erémia – created by French nose Barnabé Fillion as part of a new series called Othertopias.

An exploration into imaginary vistas and topographies, Othertopias was inspired by “somewhere else”, explains Fillion. “While travelling, I think since I was 17, I had this audiobook from a philosopher reflecting on the idea of ‘other spaces’ and the study of other spaces. [Othertopias] is the idea of other spaces, but mostly focused on the liminal spaces, the interstitial spaces.

“In 2017, I started to work with a friend of mine, a philosopher, and we decided to explore the idea of perfume as an othertopia. We looked into philosophers who worked with this idea. You can find a lot of influence from Gaston Bachelard with the poetry of spaces. After developing this idea, [we thought] maybe it could be a range of perfume. So I came to Aēsop with this idea for a collection.”

Mood board for Miraceti

It’s interesting to note that the way Fillion speaks to specific details of his early days travelling recalls the thinking British writer Alain de Botton pursued in his book The Art of Travel. It’s not the destination in which travel actually occurs, but the in-between places: in the air on planes, on the sea in ships, or over land on buses and trains. It’s an experience that’s almost contradictory – we are forced into a moment of personal suspension, or pause, while at the same time moving from one space to another. It’s this delightful point of tension that Othertopias takes us into, conveying sceneries of transience, not in the sense of disappearance, but of movement across complex and various surfaces that sit at thresholds of one state or place and the next.

Starting with Miraceti, or The Boat, the first fragrance looks to the sea and its vastness, as well as Herman Melville’s text Moby Dick. To misquote Deep Purple, it smells like smoke over the salty water. Frankincense and labdanum drift over marine notes of red seaweed and an accord that mimics the complex funk of ambergris – a by-product of the sperm whale that was once widely used in perfumery but has since been banned in most countries. To recreate the presence of ambergris, Fillion said that he had to research its olfactive definitions. “It’s a very, very long list! In it, you can find chilli, seaweed, animalic, and tobacco. I’ve never seen such a long description of one ingredient.

“But we tried to reproduce that illusion of ambergris with different ingredients, so I used ambrette, natural ambrette, which is the most expensive ingredient in perfumery. I used styrax, so that really brings that sort of ambergris note, labdanum, chilli leaf, green mate and red seaweed.”

Erémia

Karst is the smell of a coastline that anticipates the return of those who went to sea. If you can picture yourself standing on the edge of a cliff, the sea below you, surrounded by a wind that brings faint traces of a storm rolling in and the wood of trees , that’s Karst. “Nietzsche once spoke about the best perfume being the smell of air,” says Fillion. “But I was wondering, what is the smell of air?

“So for me that perfume is a study of air, with the texture of the sea foam. I really worked very hard on creating that foam texture. It’s also this idea of erosion, like the encounters of the force of the sea with the cliff.”

Rounding out the journey is Erémia, a return to urban spaces yet underpinned by greenery, and the fragrance that it could also be argued is the most accessible of the three. Zest of yuzu and bright galbanum blend with iris to create a floral aroma that Fillion describes as an inner-city oasis of greenery and wet cement after the rain. “Erémia is about nature taking back its space in the mineral world of the cities,” he tells WISH, “so it’s about all the blooming. Where Karst is about being on top of that cliff and inhaling, exhaling, Erémia is about the micro-dialogue of nature that sometimes we don’t see but that cannot be stopped.”

To say Aēsop is solely a skincare brand is to do a disservice to the attention that is paid to the product creation at every level. From the face wash to the body wash and moisturisers, or hydration, to use the internal vernacular, each one comes with an aromatic presence that lures us in as much as the product’s efficacy. Sometimes more, if we’re completely honest. Fillion has also been involved in developing and honing Aesop’s olfactory offering since 2015, creating and directing the development of room sprays, the brand’s new range of candles, and other perfumes including Hwyl and Rozu.

Yet this new trio of fragrances marks an interesting break from Aēsop’s more familiar scent markers, which have traditionally been embedded in tangible and real-world signifiers: Marrakech has the spiced richness of its namesake city; Hwyl is a forest in Japan; and Rozū is the work and life of French architect Charlotte Perriand and a Japanese Wabara rose that was created in her name. Othertopias, instead, are entirely imaginary, mapping a land that doesn’t exist yet remains within reach of our imaginations. Familiar, but out of the realm of possibility. Call it the uncanny valley of fragrance.

“I think they share a signature [aroma], which is the Othertopia accord, but it’s not really made by ingredients,” says Fillion. “It’s this idea of putting them in relation to space and putting them in relation to each other.

“So I think the relation to space makes you realise how perfume is already everywhere, and that’s something that was so particular to Aēsop as being a skincare brand that had a very strong olfactory accent, but this olfactory accent came from the functions of what those systems were bringing in the formula, not just smell.”