Craft by Andrea Maack

According to Wikipedia: "Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events, that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner." This happens to me so often I'm sometimes wondering if I have a team of supernatural beings working full time hitting me over the head.

The other day I wrote a blog post about Perfume Shopping in Iceland. The next day I went visiting my favourite perfume store here in Stockholm, Cow Parfymeri, in order to smell their Amorages. When I stood there, complentating my smelly wrists, I saw a perfume line that I had never seen before. There were no labels on the sides of them so I turned one upside down and guess what? They were made in Reykjavík, Iceland. Unknowingly, I had stumbled over Andrea Maacks line. She is an visual artist and she has had 3 perfumes made that are supposed to be olfactory representations of her artistic work.

The first one that I've tried is "Craft", a very unusual scent. The piece of work it's representing is a jacket, seen below:

And here is the print on the jacket, an intricate, organic pattern of pencil lines:

So, how does this smell? At Andrea Maacks website Craft is being described as: "Like being lost in a foggy forest with metallic trees and citrus fruits hanging from the metallic branches." Does this sound weird? The funny thing is that once you sniff the perfume it makes perfect sense. First, there is a strong burst of tonic water mixed with bitter grapefruit rind and metal. I'm also reminded of the chemical taste of aspirine. The citrus note comes from eleni, a resin with a spicy and citrusy scent. There is no sweetness whatsoever and if this will not wake you up, nothing will.

After a while, the tonic metal seamlessly moves on towards cedarwood. For a while the scent notes seem to be jumping between tonic and wood every other time I smell. At the end there is patchouli, and once you've come this far you realise that is has been there all the time, nudging everything else along.

So, is this something anyone would want to wear? Yes, considering the metalness, it's suprisingly wearable. It's great on a scorching summers day when you want your drinks to be dry, tart and bitter and just can't stand anything too florid. If I was to describe Craft in one sentence it would be a "High-tech and long lasting gin-and-tonic cologne". I'm rating it 4 out of 5.

Samples of all Andrea Maacks fragrances are available on Luckyscent.

Pics: www.andreamaack.com