Costes!

By Marina

Does it happen to you once in a while that you stumble upon a perfume you smelled a while back, and go, what was I thinking? how come don't I own a vat of this gorgeousness?! This is what I cried out when I smelled Costes the other day. Why did I forget that it was so beautiful?!

With all those spices, cloves, pepper and bay leaves on the smoldering yet trademark-Giacobetti-transparent woody background, it smells like the most stylish, most modern potpourri you'd ever own. The lavender note in the top makes it smell cool, in both meanings of the word. And yet...there is something ancient, age-less, mysteriously deep in its rose paired with incense...It is centering, it is contemplative, it is Ecclesiastic. It, for the third time this week, makes me quote Pablo Neruda:

Ode To the Smell of Wood 

Late, with the stars

open in the cold

I open the door.

The sea

galloped

in the night.

Like a hand

from the dark house

came the intense

aroma

of firewood in the pile.

The aroma was visible

as

if the tree

were alive.

As if it still breathed.

Visible

like a garment.

Visible

like a broken branch.

I walked

into

the house

surrounded

by that balsam-flavored

darkenss.

Outside

the points

in the sky sparkled

like magnetic stones

and the smell of the wood

touched

my heart

like some fingers,

like jasmine,

like certain memories.

It wasn't the sharp smell

of the pines,

no,

it wasn't

the break in the skin

of the eucalyptus,

neither was it

the green perfumes

of the grapevine stalk,

but

something more secret,

because that fragrance

only one

only one

time existed,

and there, of all I have seen in the world

in my own house at night, next to the winter sea,

was waiting for me

the smell

of the deepest rose,

the heart cut from the earth,

something that invaded me like a wave

breaking loose

from time

and it lost itself in me

when I opened the door

of the night.

Available at Luckyscent, $80.00-$170.00.