Intra Venus
Chronotope (2021)

Fascinating, if somewhat unsettling, Intra Venus approaches the green floral chypre concept with a stark realism that collides with something cold and clinical. I love hyacinths, but it is so easy for them to run sharp, almost acrid, when juxtaposed with other notes that are unable to soften their bite. Pairing these flowers with a yarrow oil, another strong green and herbaceous scent, even camphoraceous, imparts this antiseptic quality that I don't think necessarily flatters. My mind reads it as chilling, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop—a prologue to something grim, even as sunlight enters the hospital window and warms the get-well-soon flowers at one's bedside.

This is my favorite (and a fairly photorealistic) interpretation of hyacinth so far!

Others have done a great job of getting at the more literal aspects of this; after sitting with it conceptually, I’ll say:

I like green fragrances, but not *too* green--Chanel No. 19 yes; Vent Vert not really; Jacomo Silences, maybe. This is…not just green, but on a similar axis I’d describe it as bracing, not biting. It smells like the stiffness of crinolines or starch, like the fields in an ad where an impossibly beautiful woman is wearing makeup that aggressively attempts to turn back time; like static back when television was analog and ozonically electric.

I love to read the copy and see if I can ‘get’ the description of a perfume, and in this case…there *is* somehow a temporal element. I doesn’t smell musty and old, or industrial and new, but I find myself catching a whiff every now and again and realizing it is still there, it persists (that’s one of my favorite parts of wearing perfume, smelling something and being taken aback by how lovely or intriguing it is, and only then remembering, oh yes, I did that!) I also get from it something antiseptic with the sharpness of hyacinth and wasabi, that calls to mind hospital rooms and endless waiting—and, yes, transcendence and removal from everyday reality, if not from pain. It's transparent in an icy, glacial way.

I have smelled almost all of Carter’s perfumes so far and love his approach. I own small bottles of this, Buen Camino and Playalinda. And although I do find it satisfyingly thought-provoking, it’s not nearly as challenging as I expected from the description. This gets a 9/10 (and many reaches, especially in the summer) from me, and I really do try to reserve the ends of the scale for things that exceed the imagination.

Other perfumes that share a similar glass knife sensibility to my nose: Timbre, by Chris Rusak