Gemini ♊︎ natural perfume. twin jasmine, neroli, palo santo, mandarin. August 2024

Gemini ♊︎ botanical perfumea l c h e m y ♊︎For Gemini I wanted to create the impression of air just below the canopy of a cloud forest: sheer, shimmering, ethereal, clear. To achieve this I paired two sets of twins: jasmine (J. sambac and grandiflorum) with citrus (neroli and a light-as-air mandarin extract) and imagined them flitting among the periwinkle and celadon leaves, cauliflory foreground to clouds. The sticks holding the twins in constellation are Ecuadoran holy wood, a bridge from ground to sky. I created a first draft of this perfume 10 years ago when I was in a different, but similar place. I was living in Southern California, on the precipice of divorce, struggling to complete a dissertation on intelligence media hermeneutics. I thought this scent would activate the intellectual side of my personality: Gemini Rising. It did, but not in the way I had expected, driving me me into further exploration of natural perfumery and plants, far away from my PhD. It still wields the c