The Pearl

[Jenjin]

A salt-encrusted cocoon overflowing with almond blossoms,

sweet patchouli, and dried peony petals whipped into orris butter.

[ghoulnextdoor]

The Pearl opens with an unexpected fruity-tarty-sweetness as if someone had sliced a perfectly ripe persimmon atop a bed of dried apricots. This initial surprise fades as the scent settles into something truer to its nature. It becomes the olfactory embodiment of iridescence - if the pearlescent interior of an abalone shell could release its shimmer as fragrance. There's something mineral and organic happening simultaneously here, like salt crystals forming on driftwood at low tide. From there, the scent unfolds in luminous ripples, revealing the strange not-quite-colors that exist inside shells - those blues that aren't blue, the pinks that aren't quite pink, the greens that seem to flicker in and out of existence depending on how the light hits. It smells exactly how that color-shifting, mysterious inner world of abalone looks - ethereal, ancient, and somehow both oceanic and otherworldly at once.