Glass takes an olfactory road trip with Edition Perfumes

Edition Perfumes Release On The Road Eau De Parfum
Glass takes an olfactory road trip with Edition Perfumes

Timothy Han founded Edition Perfumes to create fragrance for those people who, like himself and his friends, “follow their passions … think, explore and create”. Pre-eminent works of literature inspire his limited edition perfumes. On The Road, inspired by Jack Kerouac’s 1951 novel, is the second perfume to be released by the house, who describe it as “itinerant in nature”.

Glass think this is a perfect description. This is a fragrance that is restless and searching. It questions, provokes and pushes.

Edition Perfumes On The Road

Edition Perfumes have followed Kerouac’s road trip in building this scent, taking the wearer from the sidewalks and bars of ‘40s New York through the expanses of middle America and on to the cedar woods of the West Coast.

But part of Edition Perfumes’ manifesto, stated by Timothy Han, is the hope “that if you get a chance to try my fragrances that you will find within them your own stories.”

For Glass, this perfume takes us to forests; to places deep and dark but with the potential to burn. Despite On The Road possessing a vanilla base note, Glass finds no cosy sweetness in this scent; instead: a dramatic burst of smoky, woody notes that is both challenging and unexpected at first meeting. And while there is a freshness and clarity to the top notes of lemon and bergamot, we are fascinated by a heart of melancholy wood, and base notes that include birch and oakmoss.

Edition Perfumes On The Road 3A single bottle of Edition Perfumes On The Road

If the right person is wearing it, a high collared, tightly buttoned overcoat can be the most seductive garment, and in the same way, this perfume – although it features no classically come-hither notes – can and will seduce. It is complex, intriguing, a little disturbing and all the more captivating for that. It is an uncompromising perfume and without doubt a unisex fragrance, every bit as intriguing on a man as on a woman.

Edition Perfumes formulates their fragrances using natural ingredients, which means there is variation to each batch of scent, depending on the quality of the harvest of the individual ingredients. While most fragrance houses are at pains to de-emphasise this, and do their utmost to ensure a level of regularity in their formulas, Edition Perfumes choose to celebrate these subtle variations. Edition Perfumes are created in limited quantities; each edition is numbered so that the particular batch of perfume an individual bottle came from can be easily identified by the buyer.

The packaging of Edition Perfumes On The Road

The packaging and presentation of Edition Perfumes is an essential part of the experience. Each edition of the perfume comes in a box unique to that edition, crafted in the form of a hardcover book. For On The Road, the first limited edition run of 500 boxes features art prints by British artist Cedric Christie, whose beautiful and haunting photographs interpret the differing facets of this complex scent; the various stages of this road trip. Glass is particularly drawn to the isolation and anticipation conveyed through image of the station platform; you might be moved by the brightness and promise of the cornfields …

And On The Road is as beautiful out of the box as within. The 60ml glass bottles are pleasingly weighty: the yellow and black fabric that wraps the dip tube hints at danger and adds a touch of visual cordite to a smoky, adventurous perfume that is evocative, uncompromising, hard to ignore and thoroughly addictive.

by Rachel McCormack

On The Road is available here

Opening image: Timothy Han. Photograph: Agnieszka Trzoch 2015

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Glass Online beauty writer

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