Perfume is an intricateart. Multiple aromas blend together to create the most ethereal expression of personality and emotion. There is also an art to choosing them, the character of the scent must be complementary to your own. Lavender Clouds and Poetry celebrates these complexities with three inaugural scents rooted in various interpretations of female beauty.
This journey of beauty and perfume started long ago. From a young age, founder Akosua Nyarko was drawn to all things beauty related. It began as rummaging through her mother’s makeup bag as a child and dousing herself in her perfume. This evolved into layering scents to create something none of her classmates were wearing in high school, which became concocting customs scents in College.
“I would tincture certain ingredients that had aromatic properties and blend them with essential oils. I always found the process extremely relaxing, cathartic and a wonderful distraction from the daily stressors of the college grind.”
Gone are the days of creating aromatic potions at the kitchen table between study sessions, but the love of perfume never faded. The only aspect that has changed is the quality of the ingredients. Now her fragrances are formulated with natural, high-quality raw materials. This can be a difficult task for small indie brands, who suffer an uphill battle in regards to the supply chain. For Akosua, however, this time around, she has some allies.
“Thankfully, my experience with launching a second brand is that I have developed a lot of wonderful connections which has made the process of procuring raw materials a breeze with my new business venture.”
The Journey to the Perfect Scent
The journey of perfumery is one of many surprises and challenges, especially utilizing natural ingredients. Mother nature is as fickle as she is beautiful, causing occasional lack of uniformity from one batch of ingredients to another. Weather conditions, harvesting variables and processing, may result in changes in aroma, texture or colour. Even without these outside factors, the varying characteristics of aromas and essences can be surprising.
“It amazes me how completely unsuspecting scents blended together can create a euphoric aroma,” said Akosua, “Or how a certain aroma may have a sharp, unpleasant sometimes even mouldy characteristic to it. Nevertheless, that same scent will completely transform and blossom into something sweet and ambrosial when diluted by 1% or even less!”
Each three Lavender Clouds and Poetry scents have a star ingredient to which all the other are blended around. This main ingredient is meant to draw the wearer through the concoction to discover more profound and more in-depth fragrant notes. For example, Peculair Pink Fruit Concoction 26 features pink peppercorn as the headliner. When diluted to 10%, it becomes sweet and candy-like.
“For me, perfume is a ballad of notes, an enchanting sonnet of annotations that dance, sway and caress the skin. When creating a poem, the thought process behind that ode is the same for me, the words dance and sway in my head.”
Finding Lavender Poetry and Clouds
It was no simple task to narrow down these three original scents, having undergone many transformations before becoming what we know. Each perfume has a concoction number, which dictates at what point the perfume was as it should be. Some came easier than others, from Dripping Nectar Concoction 15 to A Different Type of Soft Concoction 51.
As mentioned, each scent has a unique personality, each different but no one better than the other. Dripping Nectar Concoction 15 is sensual, intoxicating and very sexy. Peculiar Pink Fruit Concoction 26 is spicy, sweet alluring and sumptuous. A Different Type of Soft Concoction 51 is plush, fresh and warm. All three of these delicious scents are vegan, cruelty-free and non-toxic. Their raw materials are only sources from companies that are sustainable, fair trade and leaping bunny approved.
Once a sumptuous perfume is created, the task is not entirely done. It needs a worthy vessel. These lovely paint-splattered bottles are inspired by what one could consider the abstract art of the sky: clouds!
“Clouds are not identical, and none of our bottles are identical because they are all hand-painted in an abstract manner.”
Your Perfect Match is Waiting
The power of perfume is like that of poetry: abstract, emotional and complex. Each one of these three delightful perfumes have distinctly different offerings, waiting to please the nose of the perfect wearer. Breathe in deep and allow the notes to guide you. The aroma of the three inaugural Lavender Clouds and Poetry perfumes will take you on a journey to your ideal scent.
“Perfume, to me, is an expression of oneself. It’s an extension of who you are, what you feel, value and love. It provides clues to your personality and sometimes those clues are a contradiction to who you are.”