Essaouira, by Ane*Walsh

This is the perfume that is going to the Primordial Scents 2012 Salon.

The element I chose was Earth, but my brief is a beach. A beach is a point of confluence of the elements. It is Earth and Water generating Wind and the Sun with its fire which is the master of the movements they all perform.

I imagined this brief walking on the beach of Essaouira, in Morocco, in January.

The three days I spent in that place filled me with enchantment, peace and love in such a way that I will not forget. It was the New Year Berbere of 2964 and there was joy everywhere.

On the first morning we went down walking on the beach and I could smell analytically all the scents that come from Nature at that moment. The cool breeze of the morning, bringing the smells of the Sea, the air full of seagulls flying, that black labrador running after the birds, the camels that smell so sweaty and earthy, that girl with magnificent feet all tatooed with henna...

But I was thirsty and could only think of a drink very common on Brazilian beaches: coconut water, and that thought was making me obssessive company while I was coming and going on the long long beach. "There isn't any coconut water here! This beach would be perfect if there was."

To my surprise, as soon as I arrived back in the town, there was a very welcoming orange and grapefruit juice stall where I went so many times to quench my thirst from then on.

In the souk we had so much fruit, ate so many prawns and fried fish! In the street market, many colors: carrots, huge artichokes, tomatoes, oranges, pink onions, purple figs, pickled yellow lemons and olives of all colors filling the air with their perfumes.And all the crafts, like new clothing, necklaces, berbere goodies, carpets smelling of wool, herb doctors and mastery woodwork like those boxes made of olive trees, cedar or thuya so deliciously smelly.

And we had a loving time, full of hugs and good feelings.

This is what I intended to translate in my perfume that smell like Earth, but also smells like sea and breeze and is warm like the sun on that winter day.

In the composition of the perfume I chose an array of Moroccan oils and many scents from there. But not all of them.

Basenotes are of Malaysian Khao Yai oudh, cedarwood and thuya.

Lavender, blue chamomila and sunny saffron as heart note, that gives that scent of maritime breeze, but I had my coconut obssessively present, so I put some drops of massoia bark and coconut scent came in.

Needless to say that the sourire of this perfume is made of sweet orange, grapefruit and sicilian lemon.

It starts with the orange, goes to coconut, then to beach and wind, and fresh fish(!) and finishes in a warm loving kiss.

It is presented for the Salon  gradated as Eau de Toilette but you can add more alcohol in it to make it open its arms and fly high like a seagull.

You try it!

(PS: Blue Mogador ink)