Violet Ends thrives even in the wake of destruction. Sumptuous amounts of smoky papyrus, divine incense, and white birch are wrapped in raw tobacco leaves with a flourishing heart of violet and rhubarb growing within. Dark but optimistic, this scent recognizes the beautiful complexities of life.
NOTES
Top: Rhubarb, Bergamot, Black Pepper
Middle: Violet, Black Tea, Tobacco Leaf, Incense
Base: Orris, White Birch, Tanned Leather, Smoked Papyrus
PERFUMER
Undisclosed
HOW IT WEARS
The wear of Violet Ends is really interesting and quite unexpected! It opens with the violet, sweet and earthy but also a touch vegetal because of the rhubarb and iris. As it wears, it gets deeper and richer, smoky and even a little salty/savoury at times. The rich tanin of black tea mingles with smoked papyrus, incense and leather for a sultry dry down that’s still garnished with the deep purple of violet petals. This fragrance lasts 4-6 hours on the skin for us.
LORE LOVES
We are obsessed with this interpretation of violet – it’s not candied violet, or powdery violet, it’s an earthy, smoky violet. For us, it brings to mind the London music/party scene in the late 1970s. The night has ended but it’s still dark, and you wrap yourself up in your leather trench coat to shield yourself from the cold as you walk up your garden path that’s peppered with winter blooming violets. You get inside, light some incense, brew yourself a cup of tea and put a record on before settling down on your paisley settee for a cigarette, a smile still on your face thinking about the adventures you had that night.
ABOUT THE BRAND
In late 2015, Boy Smells began as an experiment in candle-making in the Los Angeles kitchen of co-founders and partners Matthew Herman and David Kien. Herman and Kien began by making the things they’d want to use daily – products that were fluid, essential, but also accessible.
The Boy Smells ethos is all about elevating your intimate world. Packaged in pink and conceived beyond the gender binary, their fragrances – both home and personal – make loving your identity a daily ritual.
Each fragrance draws inspiration from the founders’ memories and experiences, but also takes into account the context and history attached to different smells. Each Boy Smells fragrance is like the complex identity of a person, full of dualities and contradictions, and because of that, wearing them allows you to reinforce your sense of self every day before you walk out the door.
“We wanted to have products that were embracing masculine and feminine simultaneously in a simple and straight-forward way that wasn’t overtly targeted to one gender. It’s a permission to harness your power from wherever you want it.” co-founder, Matthew Herman.
