On grief, Grounded Hills and the perfumes we inhabit
For the past ten years, there’s been an ever-evolving cast of neighbourhood cats that visit my first floor kitchen window. This began in early 2016 with a black cat I called Grimalkin who used to come round for treats and the occasional hop in to have a nap in my sock drawer. Word got out and cats have visited ever since. There’s even a female fox I named Mackie who makes the trip up and gets the best treats for being brave. Yesterday, one of the cats who I’d named Smudge passed away.
Smudge only began visiting recently. I’m not sure if he had a home. He was very frail, cantankerous and often drooling. Looking at him, I knew he wasn’t long for this world, but it was tremendously sad nonetheless, and I’m still sitting with it a day later. The thought that I won’t ever see him sitting on the sill again, growling and spitting at my little bengal, Peanut, while she watched him eat his food.
I had to be at the studio yesterday after it happened, which was hard. I thought I’d switch off my thoughts by distracting myself with getting caught up on sampling collections brands had sent me. It might have made me a bit more depressed, or maybe the disappointment and annoyance were a more palatable poison than feeling grief over the death of a cat that wasn’t mine.
In a video Q&A that we are posting to Sainte Cellier’s social media later today, one of the questions that I was asked, and one that I’m often asked, is how I choose the brands that I stock. The answer to this is always evolving, as is the way I challenge myself to answer it.
Yesterday I was thinking about liminality and the terrain it exists within and how that relates to how I interpret perfume and what I look for in those interpretations. At its best, for me, perfumery creates a site for dream language that exists in dialogue between its nomenclature, aesthetic execution and user translation. The feeling I most look for in myself is curiosity, and where that curiosity might lead me.
I didn’t find any of that yesterday. There were pretty perfumes and a handful of really cringe ones that were probably chosen by someone who defines himself as a disruptor on LinkedIn, but nothing that made me feel like I wanted to stay or inhabit these spaces with any part of myself. I suppose that’s why there’s only 30 brands on Sainte Cellier instead of 300.
Today I am inhabiting Danlo’s Grounded Hills. I often hear some scents described as a hug in a bottle. Grounded Hills is more like a deep, soul-nourishing embrace, arms firmly around you. It’s thick cable knit wool of a jumper heavier than a weighted blanket and rich, savoury roasted grains. For me, Grounded Hills carries this feeling of time in a way that’s not vintage but more akin to antiquity. It hums with an earthiness far from the usual references of patchouli and vetiver and creates its own unique sense of terra firma.
Grounded Hills is a fragrance that today is allowing me to feel small. Just a little smudge myself, feeling sad about a cat I didn’t really know.