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  • LE PARLOIR | Limited Return Eau de Parfum - magnolia, osmanthus, black tea
  • LE PARLOIR | Limited Return Eau de Parfum - magnolia, osmanthus, black tea

LE PARLOIR | Limited Return Eau de Parfum - magnolia, osmanthus, black tea

Glass bibelots, colossal canapés, silk drapery and garlands of perfumed flowers strung from carved mouldings crowned in the effigies of plump cherubs, grapevines, or rare birds—Le Parloir, French for “the parlour” and derived from the verb parler, ”to speak”, is a household room where members of the middle and upper classes received guests for afternoons of pleasantry and evenings of intrigue.Predecessors of the humble living room, these stately drawing rooms depended on visual, spatial, and sensory aesthetics to communicate the homeowners’ wealth and status, creating a formal domestic setting for intimate gatherings and social elbow-rubbing.

Though the lady of the house was often charged with the curation and oversight of the Victorian-era parlour, rarely were women invited to its ornately-carved table as an equal to the master of the house and his patrons — that is, until the advent of the Spiritualism movement in the mid to late nineteenth century, which quickly took western society by storm. Evenings of gentility and polite exchange turned into nights of private séances, where friends and family would gather, wide-eyed in wonderment, to witness as an interpreter, known as a medium, contact and relay messages from the spirits of the dead.

Male-dominated society’s perception of women as overly-sensitive, nervous, and frail beings made them the perfect candidates for mediumship, and as the craze grew, so did their entrepreneurship and the grandeur of their performances. Automatic writing, table-tipping and, eventually, spirit photography, were just some of the forms of communication used, and whether or not these mediums were irreverent frauds benefitting from the bereavement of mourners, mediumship and Spiritualism undeniably granted many women access to financial autonomy and the overdue opportunity to have their voices heard, even if under a spectral guise.
Originally released in late fall of 2020 as part of perfumer April Lea's Cabinet of Scents side-project, Le Parloir was an experimental fragrance built atop in-house tinctures of vanilla bean, basmati, and lapsang souchong tea. Since reworked*, this refined and lightly reformulated eau de parfum wreathes together the alluring aromas of jasmine, osmanthus, and magnolia, and lays them over a base of fermented tea leaves and rich antique woods. Add a spoonful of milk and honey, and the resulting fragrance is a rich white floral, sweet and lactonic, with a grounded gourmand quality and rich, earthy, and wooden undertones.

* The addition of in-house tinctures made the original Le Parloir slightly tacky to the touch and heavy in pigment, which is not the case for the current edition's seamless application.


Featured Notes: bergamot · osmanthus · magnolia · jasmine · milk · honey · rosewood accord · fermented black tea


Aspects: 
sweet · floral · lactonic · agrestic undertones

Smells Like: the sweet smell of narcotic blooms arranged in ormolu vases heavy on the air · the flicker of candlelight against silk-spangled walls · milk and honey tipped into saucers of Ceylon tea adorned with a slice of bergamot · gilded rosewood carpentry 

Presented in a 15ml black glass bottle with atomizer. 

Ingredients: Alcohol (Ethanol, Pure), Natural Fragrance/Parfum* (Essential Oils, Absolutes, CO2s, and Plant Extracts)
*This scent contains HONEY extract


A 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY LIMITED RETURN RELEASE
NATURAL · BOTANICAL · UNISEX
BLENDED AND BOTTLE IN-HOUSE IN SMALL BATCHES