Javanica
Olympic Orchids

Opens up with some citrus and a little bit of nutmeg, but quickly blows up into an incredible smoky cloud. Unfortunately smoke with a tiny bit of citrus in the top is all I can really smell after a while. Would have been nice to have some other elements from the olibanum aside from just the smoke.

I’ve been working my way through about a dozen Olympic Orchids perfumes over the past year or so to see what all the love is about. It’s easy to do—the you-pick-‘em sample sets are well priced, beautifully packaged, and accompanied by hand-written thank-you notes by owner/perfumer/polymath Ellen Covey. But so far, while I’ve found a lot to appreciate, I haven’t found a lot that I’d actually wear.

Covey, a neurobiologist, bat enthusiast, and orchid cultivator, is a self-taught perfumer, and her aesthetic is definitely DIY. She's not putting on airs, and seems completely devoted to her craft in ways that have little to do with achieving "commercial" success. Covey is all about naturals, experimenting in quirky and sometimes conceptual ways with everything from the smell of plants, flowers, and herbs, to leather and fertile soil to sun-baked stone and the way rain smells as it evaporates off concrete. The perfumes are definitely unique, but most of what I've smelled so far have a fuzzy roughness, artistic ideas whose reach exceeds their grasp.

Inspired by the smell of one of her beloved orchids, Javanica goes easier on the nose than most of her perfumes. It's very pretty at the top—and dries down to a cozy vanillic haze several hours in—but its middle run is just too craft fair for my taste, smelling exactly like the interior of my local Anthropologie, the olfactory equivalent of low-slung music festival bell bottoms, crochet tops, wide brimmed felt hats, and silk kimonos. Perfectly put together for its aesthetic, but ultimately not all that sophisticated.

Another winner from the Olympic Orchids house. Sweet-spicy-frankincense runs the show here at first, giving a heavy herbal musk. On top of this is a bright yet soft citrus: orange or mango perhaps, and just a bit of lime to add tartness with the sweetness. Oh, this is good. All of the aforementioned elements are in conjunction with heavy florals, a strong dose of orchid: the scent is named after the Phalaenopsis Javanica flower, which is an orchid that blooms in the forest of Java. You can easily smell the inspiration for this, light vanilla sweetness.

And still, beyond that, there's so much more. As you get to the middle notes, you can smell the nutmeg, the woody base that is wonderfully blended with the rest of the notes. During the dry-down, you get incense with...green tea? It smells milky and green, although the milkiness could be coming from the nutmeg as well. The incense and nutmeg give it a dark base that works to perfection with the sweeter notes. Just nothing short of superb.

Projection is average, and sillage is quite good. I just love this: the note combination is eclectic, certainly, but it all works in seamless conjunction. This is my new favorite floral, really and truly.

9.5/10

Opens rich, fruity spicy citrus and slowly becomes fruity, spicy floral. It's hard to pinpoint what the floral might be - it's not a typical floral, and said to be the fragrance of the orchid Phalaenopsis  javanica. But it's lightly spicy and sweet, with the rosewood giving it a slight woodiness. Unfortunately on me, the fruity aspect becomes a little sugary, sort of that kool-aid type note; not too bad, but enough to keep it fake-fruity on my skin.  My skin can turn certain sweet notes in fragrances to sugar that it doesn't on other's skin, like the sweet notes in Tabac Blond and L'Air De Rien, so that may be going on here too. But it keeps this one from developing fullness on me. Not bad, but a step too sugary.

Some of the Olympic Orchids offerings are just too dense and gunky to make the transition from intriguing ideas to successful perfumes. Javanica has an altogether lighter touch and a more mainstream feel but has a trick or two up its sleeve.
A refreshing and pleasing citrus and spice opening starts proceedings. This is familiar territory marked out by a legion of colognes aimed at male buyers, except Javanica's citruses have none of the chemical screech of those offerings and the nutmeg is radiant and lively, not a dusty bore.
But then, hey presto, the opening morphs seamlessly to a dreamy vanilla ringed with light floral sweetness. This phase keeps shifting all the time as frankincense and rosewood ascend in one's perception. Rosewood which is a woody note inflected with floral and spicy tones is an inspired choice, rounding off the composition and no doubt reminding the perfume's creator of the scent of her beloved orchids.
Sadly a few hours in, all that's left is a faint creamy vanilla with a trace of spice.
While appreciating the deftness of its execution, I found Javanica a bit short on presence.

An interesting scent from Olympic Orchids. At first, it's got a cream soda feeling, complete with sparkling freshness, but with a complex mix of fruits and flowers on top. As the effervescence faded away, a rosewood note came in and became, at least on me, the focus of the scent.

Rosewood often reminds me of the smell of tobacco leaf, a sort of brown paper/papyrus smell that shares a vague similarity to heliotrope but is much drier and lacks the sweet almond smell. Javanica smells like this, but with a non-specific fruity sweetness on top, a slug of edible spices, and vanilla underneath further sweetening everything. It's vaguely musky, but in a soapy way, and it reminds me of a less sensual, more naturist take on Ava Luxe's Love's True Bluish Light.

This is well put together and, in my opinion, one of Olympic Orchids' most fully realized perfumes, both in terms of structure and maturity. The longevity (except for the lingering vanilla) is somewhat low, but as is expected from something very high in natural ingredients. My neutral review is only because I don't care much for that papery rosewood note when it turns up in perfumes, but I still think this is well done.