St. Clair

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Edge Effects

Edge Effects sample spray with b+w post card, and a peach, a clementine, tomato leaf and basil, and a big box of nag champa incense.

The inspiration for this scent is the dual world at the line where meadow meets trees, and it’s lovely–multifaceted, but without hard edges–and always changing from moment to moment.

Citrusy green peaches at first sniff that immediately ripen, turning sweet and spicy and lush for half an hour or so, not too loud, but very inviting.
Labdanum smoke breezes in, delicate and airy over earthy pine sweetened with jasmine. We we linger here for half the day in personal space, whispers flicker in and out: small musky animalics, pleasantly bitter leaves, sugared herbs–
The peaches and jasmine turn creamy toward the evening with a bit of vanilla, almost like benzoin but lighter and less sticky on the skin.
Gone by morning, with just a smudge of sweet greens on cotton cuffs.

Absolutely big bottle worthy, and my birthday is coming up soon.

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Another Edge, much edgier.

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Casablanca

St. Clair bottle with dark amber eau, and hosta flowers because my tuberoses haven’t put out.

White flowers hit with a bang, loads of orange blossom, jasmine and tuberose too, but they’re wild and searching rather than lusty–almost as if escaping their space instead of beckoning one toward it–then they ease back to reveal some fruity citrus for a few hours. There’s nice benzoin on the bottom with some shadowy musk, like watchful guardian cats.

One to immerse in for a day, scent a bath, fill a room–
I’m curious what it does on warm days.

Edit – 6/28/23

In summer weather this has an indolent vibe–the florals less wistful, the animalics more prowling, the labdanum a little more smoky–definitely one for nights, still hovering a soft handspan off the skin at dawn.

I might like it even more than Gardener’s Glove.

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Malika Zarra is a jazz artist from Morocco. This song is my mood today, but check out her album Berber Taxi, too.

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Eve

Paper test strip cutout of a square St. Claire bottle, and test vial of Eve.

Eve was finalist in the 2020 Art and Olfaction Awards in the artisan/independent category, and it’s aptly named, with enormous seductive apple trees growing out of a single drop.

Comes on strong and skanky at first, dirty jasmine that cleans up with roses as it settles down and turns to orchard blossoms. Then the whole tree fills the room, woody trunks, green leaves, and fruit.
After a few hours, powder coats everything in personal space, for the whole day, with smudges of sweet char on the cuffs until laundry day.

The 35% concentration is way too indolic for me–I feel naked wearing it (which might be the point.)
An eau de toilette would be less overwhelming.

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Another take on Eve and the garden.

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Frost

St. Clair sample vial on a promo photo, with scattered with cloves.

Starts uncomfortably fecal, a bit the way Musk Deer does, but after five minutes or so, roses grow out of the fertilizer. They bloom, bright and lemony with petitgrain tea, then get ripe and sweet for a good two hours, a foot of the wrist.
The base settles to great smoky vanilla spiked with cloves, that last most of the day on the skin.

Elegant, after the earthy opening.
I’d wear it to garden parties, if I were extroverted and socially adept.

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Discovered this cool group today–

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Gardener’s Glove

Grubby garden glove holding fallen tomato leaf, spotty rose, bruised apricot, and small bottle with St. Clair logo.

“Gardener’s Glove was a finalist in the 2019 Art and Olfaction Awards within the artisan/independent category,” according to the St. Clair Scents website, and yep, this stuff is magical.

The tomato leaf opens loud, the way I like it, jolly green with a nice hit of citrus peel–
And then leather eases in, holding crushed herbs, bruised fruit and flower prunings, a pretty chaotic mess that gets super sweet with black currants and jasmine for several nice hours within personal space.
There’s a dust-up of saffron and vetiver as it settles, then some pleasant animalics and benzoin linger with apricots for the evening, subtle on skin and all night on the cuffs.

Somehow this all adds up to a fairy-tale–a Folavril pixie wearing Land of Warriors armor–but not about royalty, this eau is about the groundskeeper who trained the thorny rose forest, pruned the poisoned apple trees, cultivated the giant beanstalk seeds.

Niche quality, with prices to match, but absolutely worth saving up for–I feel like I could grow moth orchids that flew and ferns that actually fiddled, while wearing it.

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Robert Smith (of The Cure) and Steven Severin (of Siouxsie and the Banshees) got together in The Glove to do a new wave album called Blue Sunshine. This instrumental tune also starts chaotic, then gets super sweet.