Rusalka’s Embrace

I’m shocked there aren’t more comments on this! Ugly AI promo art aside, I have to give the nose their flowers for the innovation and artistry they bring to perfume. This is the first perfume I’ve smelled where I was truly taken aback by the scent when I got my first whiff. It’s like nothing I’ve ever smelled before, and I’ve never had a fragrance transport me into a different reality so viscerally. The initial notes are very aquatic and ozonic — I’m sitting in a cold river on a stone bed at the outskirts of a city. There’s something dangerous around, but I’m not quite sure what (Rusalka, obviously). I was in a perfume shop with my friend who was trying smoky perfumes for herself, and she commented that there’s a sharp, almost chemically smell that lingers towards the end of any inhale of this that puts her off. I smelled it at first and recoiled, but as it dried down more, it mellowed out. My friend moved on to testing other fragrances, but I found I couldn’t stop smelling this one. In the end I grabbed the testing strip to take home with me before the store lady could take them all away. My friend noticed and said that if I ended up buying this she wouldn’t be able to stand being around me. I think she’s overly fixated on the unusual punch this delivers when fresh. I’m not sure I was to smell like this either, but I want to have access to smell it whenever I want. I like the freshness that borders on cold and indistrial. I like that it’s slightly unusual. I like that I can’t find anything remotely similar. It inspires me to write. I wish this brand and particularly this perfume was promoted more and more accessible in the UK!! The bottles are also the most gorgeous I’ve ever seen — such an upgrade from what I saw they looked like before, and really helps with the storytelling.

Citrus, floral, pepper, and spices combine in the top notes to form a complex scent upon immediate use of this new fragrance. When the heart notes appear, they are softer, with apple trees blossoming next to pepper corns. And when the mysteries hidden within the base notes appear, they are playful but intellectual. A rainbow bouquet hidden in a dense library. This is not one of Pictura Fragrans’ simple fragrances. It has a quality that is dense but also playful at once. It lures while it dances. This is a scent to wear if you plan to go out for a romantic dinner. A scent to seduce if you plan to go out dancing with your eye out for a new lover. Or it could even be a scent worn at home alone while sitting in meditative silence, with its many aromatic colors entering your nostrils and mind. Anything seems possible within the mysterious veils that drop and reveal themselves with Rusalka’s Embrace.

I cannot remember the last time a “fresh forest” fragrance made me lean forward in my chair with quite this degree of alertness. One grows wary, you see, of the genre’s habitual tricks, the pre-varnished greenness, the polite suggestion of sap. And yet here is a house that seems to have stumbled upon something rarer: sincerity. I ordered their discovery set with mild curiosity and finished it with something closer to commitment. There is, in their work, an unguarded emotional register. An honesty that feels less marketed than meant. If they continue along this path, I suspect I shall remain, willingly in their orbit for some time.

You can notice your nose enjoying every compenent that create this mariny foresty scent! Its like a lake melted during ice age!

This is one of the most compelling artistic aquatics I’ve come across conceptually.