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| An A.I.-Generated Image |
When I hear about perfumes based on animals, my mind goes to gross places. I imagine civet first, and all the intense funk associated with the excretions of its anal gland floods my nose. From there I drift into barnyard ouds and horses' asses. Eventually I wind up in the south central China exhibit, with bamboo everywhere and the occasional panda peeking out at me. Animals are often interesting, sometimes cute, but rarely clean. With Zoologist Perfumes, I'm bracing myself. I'm in for a bumpy and very stinky ride.
Snowy Owl seemed the least likely to offend, and at a glance its pyramid suggested something crisp and green, maybe a little floral. I spent an evening with a paper sample, and for a few hours it smelled pretty static, a cold glass of cucumber water (nonadienal and a micro-drop of violet nitrile) with ice (cyclohexene derivatives) and a hint of floral sweetness (Calone 1951). Dawn Spencer Hurwitz (DSH Perfumes) authored it in 2020, and the result is a chilly white floral bouquet of hyacinth and lily of the valley, wrapped in a clutch of greens and left on a New York doorstep in January. There should be some loose comparisons made of Snowy Owl and classic muguet perfumes like Diorissimo, but frankly I think the avant-garde coldness that Hurwitz blanketed her creation in sets it apart from anything classical. Her composition smells of frosty air for three hours, at which point it thaws slightly, and the blanched sweetness of impossibly preserved blossoms shines through. I'm left with a gentle freshness that smells perversely cold and lifeless, yet inviting, the smell of a character from a Joan D. Vinge novel.
Wearing Snowy Owl is an interesting feeling, especially in winter. I'm used to wearing perfumes aimed at women, and this one is unisex, yet I felt weirdly self-conscious with it on. Maybe it was its strangeness coupled with the obvious floral elements that had me second-guessing my choices, or maybe I'm just not used to a perfume that is so obviously different in how it handles familiar themes. Great perfumers can take pedestrian ideas and make them novel again, and while I wouldn't spring for a full bottle of Snowy Owl, I can appreciate the genius behind it. Cold, cold air, bottled with a kiss.