Review by my wife Maria, foto by me
At the beginning of this year, Jorum Studio released a new fragrance in the Mainline collection—ASKR (Ash).
The most famous ash tree is Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse mythology, the axis of the universe connecting the upper and lower worlds.
At the start, I catch a fleeting note of ambroxan for a few seconds. It feels like a drop of an irritant before the full revelation of everything most intriguing. It’s as if it clears the mind, making the subsequent story more vividly tangible. The first to greet me after this is elemi, with its light lemon-candy, woody, slightly incense-like nuances. There's a theory that the name of this resin comes from an Arabic phrase meaning "as above, so below." And this distinctive note seems to weave through the entire narrative with thin, almost invisible threads. It acts as a counterpart to the main character—the ash tree—but from another world.
And what comes next?
Black, cooled coal ash on a smoker.
Through the smoke from the smoldering furrowed young elm bark, potassium salt emerges, leaving a special dry residue on the fingers.
A dense, oily or tar-like sea wave licking granite stones, sandstone, and limestone, charred, salted driftwood, and iodine-rich seaweed washed ashore.
Swollen green plants of marshy meadows. The smell of wet moss, lichen, and also bitter umbellifers with a slight dill-like, medicinal accent.
Peat and decaying hay.
Pale roots of calamus and iris spread a fresh, spicy-powdery, pleasantly enveloping mist.
A recent cedar cut, almost paper-like in its scent.
Ink for writing, or perhaps for painting, diluted with water.
Light and dark sticky resins—the tears of old trees.
Grey ambergris, giving the sensation of the warmth of a living creature.
A gloomy world, with a veil of fine rain settling on the web of time.
For me, Askr is the overlay of mythical images, ancient knowledge, and their interpretation through modern materials. It's great to wear both in public and when you want solitude. It's one of those perfumes that has a certain effect on the psycho-emotional state: helping to clear the mind for clear vision, to calm down, and to tune into the right mood.
And it’s an amazingly crafted perfumery object—executed with purity and seeming ease.
I perceive it as a woody-aquatic fougère, unisex leaning towards the masculine, with high longevity and moderate sillage.
When you want something deeper and more complex than Tom Ford's Oud Minérale and Profumum Roma's Acqua di Sale. In terms of direction and density, it’s comparable to Zoologist Perfumes’ Squid.
If you like the aforementioned perfumes, you should pay attention to ASKR by Jorum Studio. You won’t regret it!
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