Scents & Sounds, part 3
three more winter-y selections
With spring fast approaching — my sinuses are already bracing for allergy season to begin — I am grasping to my cold weather fragrances, attempting to squeeze the last possible second of appropriate wear out of them before the Texas heat begins to set in. After a brief scare of early spring weather last week, we’ve returned to typical late-winter weather this week: cold and rainy. Lovely.
Besides the weather, I managed to come down with a nasty case of the flu, so spending some time with a few of my comfort scents has been one of the few ways helping make the past few days bearable. Here are three I’ve been wearing so far this week and will likely be in my rotation for the rest of the cool weather season.
Stora Skuggan - Pine (2024)
Stora Skuggan is an interesting fragrance house. Hailing from Sweden, 2025 marks their 10th year of creating some of the most intriguing fragrances. While not many of their previous releases resonated with me much — Azalai is quite nice, though maybe a bit too heavy on dried fruits for me — Pine immediately caught my attention.
Conifers such as Pine, Fir, and Cypress are not only some of my favorite trees, but also some of my favorite smells. However, it is notoriously difficult to capture accurate pine and fir notes without smelling too artificial or vanishing in 30 minutes — at least in my experience.
Enter ‘Pine’ from Stora Skuggan. Humorous marketing copy and notes aside, this one delivered for me, providing a wonderful picture of a pine tree that evolves over time, tracking how freshly cut pine would be slightly sweet with fresh sap, and then dry up. There is also a bit of ‘forest floor’ that shines through here — fallen, decaying pine needles and bark with a slight hint of fungal decomposition.
This is, however, not a safe blind buy (though in my opinion, NO fragrance is a safe blind buy). Different people sensitive to certain chemicals find this quite off-putting. It’s definitely a love it or hate it offering and is quite expensive for only 30ml. For those looking to explore coniferous scents more in depth, check out the house of Pineward. They have a giant amount of offerings — some hits and some misses — that do often get very close to accurate.
Sven Wunder’s ‘Natura Morta - Reprise’ felt like a nice match for this fragrance, a perfect soundtrack to a solitary walk through a pine forest on a crisp, cool, breezy winter day.
Fischersund - No. 23 (2023)
Founded in 2019 in Reykjavik, Iceland, by Jónsi Birgisson (of Sigur Ros) and his family in what was formerly his music studio, Fischersund is a family affair that has a unique ability to offer a more holistic approach to fragrance, blending visual arts, music, and artisan in-house crafted scents to create rich experiences that are quite unique in the industry (as far as I am aware!)
No.23, funny enough, was created by Jónsi himself, pulling on memories of working alongside his father in the Reykjavik harbor, capturing “the essence of oil-stained hands, a feeling of industry and salty ocean air mixed with the aroma of pipe tobacco.”
With each fragrance, there is a scent poem written and recited (in both English and Icelandic), painting a vivid picture of the scenes they are hoping to capture and evoke. Below are the scent poems, re-posted from Fischersund’s website.
No. 23 Scent Poem - English
No. 23 Scent Poem - Icelandic
Smoke in the air and tarred telephone poles,
Anis seeds and black pepper,
tail freshly mowed grass and tobacco leaves.
Dead flowers bow to the ground.
In the breeze, the feminine fountain
pine tickles the top of your skull.
A beached whale is about to explode.
Reykur í loftinu og tjargaðir símastaurar.
Anísfræ og svartur pipar fylgja nýslegnu
grasi og tóbakslaufum.
Dauð blóm hneigja sig. Í golunni kitlar
kvenleg Lindifuran vitin.
Í fjöru er strandaður rotnandi hvalur.
Jónsi along with his former partner Alex Somers and Sin Fang have crafted soundscapes for the brand with a few releases on various streaming services. You can also hear them on the brand’s landing page on their website via a web player. They are beautifully atmospheric ambient tracks that can really capture a mood. The track below — Söl — reminds me a bit of boat horns in the distance, which given Jónsi’s inspiration for the scent felt like just the right pick.
Another note about this house that I love: recently, Fischersund created an exhibition at the Nordic Museum Seattle called Faux Flora that focuses on a multi-sensory experience. While I did not have the opportunity to attend (Note: it has been extended through February 23, 2025), it is right up my alley and mirrors a lot of the concepts I had for this series originally. So much of the fragrance world can get distilled down to vapid marketing — especially today with venture capital fragrance startups looking to exploit the market. Often the artistic perspective can get lost along the way. The appreciation of fragrance and smell in general can go far beyond simply ‘wanting to smell good’ if only you take the time and allow the space for it to.
Serge Lutens - Ambre Sultan (1993)
The scent of a bustling spice market, captured in a bottle. This herbal amber masterpiece was quite progressive for its time — 32 years old! — and could have easily been made today. It is subtle and sensuous; bold and unique. Exotic, yet intimately familiar. Soft and velvety, like an heirloom blanket pulled from an old chest, or a warm hug from a good friend.
After the burst of initial herbal notes in the opening — such as oregano and bay leaf — the resins, myrrh, and patchouli push through, sweetened ever-so-slightly by an almost imperceptible dose of vanilla. As it further dries down, it almost becomes a skin scent (‘your skin but better’), smelling of skin that has baked in the desert heat, the slightest bit of sweat dampening the surface before evaporating away.
Ambre Sultan is a rare scent that can transport me halfway across the world or feel like I’m wrapping myself in a cloud of warmth and comfort at home. There is good reason why even today it is considered by many to be the original reference amber. While there are countless other contemporary amber fragrances produced today (some I might enjoy wearing a little more, even!), I will always have a bottle of this in my collection for as long as it is produced. It also helps that 100ml can be purchased for under $100 from many resellers & the grey market all day — an absolute bargain.
The song that comes to mind for me today is a track from Jon Batiste’s recent album ‘Beethoven Blues.’ For those unfamiliar with the album, he reinterprets some famous melodies from Beethoven, putting a modern bluesy spin on many of them. There are also tracks like this featured one ‘Dusklight Movement’ that takes inspiration from Beethoven’s music to create something new. This song is pensive, but builds some initial tension before a beautiful melodic release. Restrained, yet radiant beauty.
Other things I’ve enjoyed this week:
paper cuts - Yasumi Toyoda
“You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it.” - Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Smogton from ‘Seigi no Shinboru Condorman’
Sanjo Lawal - Heavy is the head
The First OMEGA in Space Speedmaster
The Long Quest for Artificial Blood - Nicola Twilley (via Libby)
