This perfume is a dirge, in olfactory format, for another perfume. A eulogy for the author’s work which was sabotaged at the hands of our olfactory police.
There’s a big difference between expressive works of art that aim to convey a feeling or state, and mercantile attempts meant to make hands exchange money for merchandise.
I know this is a point of contention, but I want it to go down for the record that I hold EO No 2 as the main accomplishment of my career as a perfumer.
This was confirmed by Kafkaesque, the one critic whose opinion matters more to me in matters aromatic than anyone else’s.
You might ask: If Kafkaesque confirmed your sentiments, then why the olfactory epitaph for EO No 2? Why Crime & Punishment?
Just like it went to Kafkaesque, a bottle of EO No 2 went to another reviewer. They’ve gone so far as to say: “I curse Ensar for EO No 2.”
Perhaps part of that assessment was somehow related to that critic’s release of their own take on vintage musk, scheduled to hit the niche scene just weeks after No 2 arrived. Bad timing, I suppose.
I wanted to make sure I waited until their product sold out to voice my assessment so as not to be accused of the same crime myself, i.e. sabotaging another perfumer’s (until then reviewer’s) creation.
Crime & Punishment is a lament written in chords of flowers wrapped in oud and musk placed on the grave of my olfactory lovechild.
EO No 2 is not a product. It’s not part of my second collection, or third, or fourth. EO No 2 is my symphony composed with deaf ears after a career of longing for the scent of the endangered muskdeer, or the ‘‘scent of paradise” as it is called in God’s Holy Book.
Crime & Punishment, rather than reject the malicious criticism, embraces it, and accepts it as true. It takes to heart the ‘absence of notes’ and ‘lack of development’ No 2 is indicted with, and strives to improve where the former supposedly failed.
If No 2 was sultry, Crime & Punishment has a solemn austerity provided by fine over-three-decades-aged Sumatran oud, wild Cambodian and Sri Lankan oud, a motage of rare Hindi ouds from Garo Hills, North Cachar and Manipur, all sifted through the fabric of musk, on a bed of — not rose or synthetic musk, as in the case of my critic’s olfactory contraption — but blue lotus, whose petals are not only a symbol of sexuality, but spiritual awakening.
No one even thinks of using these ingredients so wantonly in a spray perfume in our so-called ‘artisan’ corner of this market, let alone to actually take oils that retail for upwards of $200 per gram and throw them into a compound.
Once you’ve spent your days and nights and years deep diving the depths of an aromatic ocean, when you’ve passed the point of nosebleeds and olfactory coma, do you relish the extravagance of such a perfume. Some, probably most, who merely keep track of scent fashion won’t understand perfume like this. They’d be let down like Bieber fans are when they first hear the 9th Symphony’s overture, or Miles’ blue.
Likewise with critics who yesterday didn’t know what oud is, and couldn’t tell the difference between a phthalate and gyrinops if their life depended on it. They can’t tune a string, yet pretend to conduct an orchestra.
As I said before, this is not an act of marketing. I just want to set the record straight, in case I die one day and you confuse my work for that of a tone-deaf bootlegger coming after your money.
Marketing is one thing, and history is quite another. And in case you didn’t catch it, in the release video of EO No 2, I described the perfume as a fragrance to be worn by the characters of War & Peace.
Since that theme was pilfered, I resort to the work of the author's ill-fated contemporary, who had a knack for gambling everything he had each night before he went home to his wife.
In the worlds of Raskolnikov, his idealistic but somehow mortally flawed protagonist:
“You know their doctrine; crime is a protest against the crookedness of the social mechanism and nothing more, and nothing more…”
And so, my crime was to have produced a better product than our olfactory Belinsky, from his YouTube police station. I received his particular interpretation of musk, and I can tell you frankly I have never smelled anything as appalling.
You may not see it yet, but here, today, we make history. A new genre of perfume is being born and some are after the money, some lust for fame, and others will die for their ideals.
You know very well I can write more appealing things. I’ve been accused of spellbinding people with note descriptions. But here, there’s something far greater at stake than selling you a bottle of perfume.
We have synthetic civet being sold as natural musk. We have synthetic ambers and fermented white wood being peddled as artisanal oud. This is a problem.
Crime & Punishment is a protest. A march against the charade of high-class synthetics peddled as artisanal aromatics. A bulldozer fueled by influencer endorsement instead of genuine artistic accomplishment.
It’s a time machine back to when musc meant MUSK and iris entailed months of maceration — not just a catch-phrase that beckons you to bow to the might of Swiss chemistry.
CRIME because it gives the finger to the IFRA and the YouTube perfume police who legitimize the banning of musk and jasmine, the restriction of rose and oakmoss so that we may all live in a plastic world and breathe in synthetic death each waking moment. A world where the deer are supposedly safe but our fish are choked by the toxic dump of nitro and polycyclic musks into our oceans.
PUNISHMENT because you can’t take an honest whiff of those slapstick niche perfumes ever again. Not without the cloying nuisance, that phony cotton-candy scent that sticks to your nose like a leech, while all you wish for is… this. Real raspberries crushed to a paste and spread across a bed of frankincense, 35-year-old oud oil infused with concentrated oud resin, and Edward rose. Grated ambergris and a sac of musk oiled up with iris dunked into blue lotus laced with ylang-ylang battered with mimosa sweetened by peach, roughed up by oud, and styrax… to give the jasmine a sharp vintage edge.
Perfume doesn’t excite us anymore. It hasn’t for decades. Donning a perfume means little more than brushing your teeth, as you go psss-psss and walk through the mist once your tie is tied. Will he like it? Will she like it? The label says Extrait.
“What was taking place in him
was totally unfamiliar, new, sudden,
never before experienced.”
A pheromonal spritz that lets raw castoreum bathed in the finest jasmines on Earth wake up a long-dormant naked attraction — not just carnal, but silage that also commands power and prestige… because fragrance once possessed such force — before musc got stripped of its K, and amber lost its gris and all we’re left with are lone molecules vying for the sexiest bottle and box.
You might even get a nice card with a long list of 16-syllable petrotoxins that tell you about all the exquisite flowers and spice and leather and sweat and oak you aren’t allowed to smell anymore. Hence, Crime & Punishment sits tight in red-tanned, full-grain Italian calf hide cut and stitched and worked by a Sufi who still wears an old pocket watch, and has an Elven eye for art. No card, I’m afraid.
You couldn’t dream up a more austere fragrance. An aristocratic scent you wear as a suit that signals that perfume means more to you than just a smell.
Noir. Intense. Not because the labels say so, but because there’s more musk in your bottle than in all the niche and luxury perfume shelves of the world combined. More oud and amber and coffee and cedar drenched in black tea than any noir celebrity poster will ever let your nose feast on, or any bootlegger can fake.
EO Parfums are signature scents. You’ll smell the shared DNA run through them: High doses of all the exalting fixatives dissolving in the most sought-after ingredients in the world of perfumery. This is not a claim about the perfumer, but nature’s gift to the perfumer.
Not only do you get the finest possible aromatics in their purest form, but the carrier isn’t just straight alcohol either. Instead, the entire composition is beefed up ten-fold with both raw Siberian musk and vintage Tanzanian sandalwood tinctures. To my knowledge, this has never been done. But it’s not about it being the fist of its kind — it’s what the creamy butter-spicy sweetness of red Tanzanian osyris does to the scent of the perfume; to the enhanced projection, longevity, and the fragrant trail it leaves in your wake.
When you smell any EO perfume, you know the nose behind them. You know the toil and expertise it took to bring them to life. Most importantly, you smell the superior class of aromatics that makes them stand out and engrave that EO signature. Agarwood matured for decades. Sandalwood harvested a lifetime ago. Jasmine they hardly grow anymore. Scents with SOUL. The kind of fragrance Avicenna had in mind when he brought the first drop of rose to life.
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word,
is what people fear most.”
I smell a scent revolution coming, and Crime & Punishment stands in the front line. So, pause the pop music, flush down that bottled laundry detergent masked as ‘perfume,’ roll up your sleeves, and don the oud defiantly.
PRE-LAUNCH SPECIAL: Order today and you’ll also receive two sandalwood infusions (.3gr each) of the Siberian musk and beach-combed Jamaican ambergris, and a tincture (1ml) of the Tanzanian osyris used in the making of your perfume as a free gift along with your purchase.
Ships 25 February.
There’s a big difference between expressive works of art that aim to convey a feeling or state, and mercantile attempts meant to make hands exchange money for merchandise.
I know this is a point of contention, but I want it to go down for the record that I hold EO No 2 as the main accomplishment of my career as a perfumer.
This was confirmed by Kafkaesque, the one critic whose opinion matters more to me in matters aromatic than anyone else’s.
You might ask: If Kafkaesque confirmed your sentiments, then why the olfactory epitaph for EO No 2? Why Crime & Punishment?
Just like it went to Kafkaesque, a bottle of EO No 2 went to another reviewer. They’ve gone so far as to say: “I curse Ensar for EO No 2.”
Perhaps part of that assessment was somehow related to that critic’s release of their own take on vintage musk, scheduled to hit the niche scene just weeks after No 2 arrived. Bad timing, I suppose.
I wanted to make sure I waited until their product sold out to voice my assessment so as not to be accused of the same crime myself, i.e. sabotaging another perfumer’s (until then reviewer’s) creation.
Crime & Punishment is a lament written in chords of flowers wrapped in oud and musk placed on the grave of my olfactory lovechild.
EO No 2 is not a product. It’s not part of my second collection, or third, or fourth. EO No 2 is my symphony composed with deaf ears after a career of longing for the scent of the endangered muskdeer, or the ‘‘scent of paradise” as it is called in God’s Holy Book.
Crime & Punishment, rather than reject the malicious criticism, embraces it, and accepts it as true. It takes to heart the ‘absence of notes’ and ‘lack of development’ No 2 is indicted with, and strives to improve where the former supposedly failed.
If No 2 was sultry, Crime & Punishment has a solemn austerity provided by fine over-three-decades-aged Sumatran oud, wild Cambodian and Sri Lankan oud, a motage of rare Hindi ouds from Garo Hills, North Cachar and Manipur, all sifted through the fabric of musk, on a bed of — not rose or synthetic musk, as in the case of my critic’s olfactory contraption — but blue lotus, whose petals are not only a symbol of sexuality, but spiritual awakening.
No one even thinks of using these ingredients so wantonly in a spray perfume in our so-called ‘artisan’ corner of this market, let alone to actually take oils that retail for upwards of $200 per gram and throw them into a compound.
Once you’ve spent your days and nights and years deep diving the depths of an aromatic ocean, when you’ve passed the point of nosebleeds and olfactory coma, do you relish the extravagance of such a perfume. Some, probably most, who merely keep track of scent fashion won’t understand perfume like this. They’d be let down like Bieber fans are when they first hear the 9th Symphony’s overture, or Miles’ blue.
Likewise with critics who yesterday didn’t know what oud is, and couldn’t tell the difference between a phthalate and gyrinops if their life depended on it. They can’t tune a string, yet pretend to conduct an orchestra.
As I said before, this is not an act of marketing. I just want to set the record straight, in case I die one day and you confuse my work for that of a tone-deaf bootlegger coming after your money.
Marketing is one thing, and history is quite another. And in case you didn’t catch it, in the release video of EO No 2, I described the perfume as a fragrance to be worn by the characters of War & Peace.
Since that theme was pilfered, I resort to the work of the author's ill-fated contemporary, who had a knack for gambling everything he had each night before he went home to his wife.
In the worlds of Raskolnikov, his idealistic but somehow mortally flawed protagonist:
“You know their doctrine; crime is a protest against the crookedness of the social mechanism and nothing more, and nothing more…”
And so, my crime was to have produced a better product than our olfactory Belinsky, from his YouTube police station. I received his particular interpretation of musk, and I can tell you frankly I have never smelled anything as appalling.
You may not see it yet, but here, today, we make history. A new genre of perfume is being born and some are after the money, some lust for fame, and others will die for their ideals.
You know very well I can write more appealing things. I’ve been accused of spellbinding people with note descriptions. But here, there’s something far greater at stake than selling you a bottle of perfume.
We have synthetic civet being sold as natural musk. We have synthetic ambers and fermented white wood being peddled as artisanal oud. This is a problem.
Crime & Punishment is a protest. A march against the charade of high-class synthetics peddled as artisanal aromatics. A bulldozer fueled by influencer endorsement instead of genuine artistic accomplishment.
It’s a time machine back to when musc meant MUSK and iris entailed months of maceration — not just a catch-phrase that beckons you to bow to the might of Swiss chemistry.
CRIME because it gives the finger to the IFRA and the YouTube perfume police who legitimize the banning of musk and jasmine, the restriction of rose and oakmoss so that we may all live in a plastic world and breathe in synthetic death each waking moment. A world where the deer are supposedly safe but our fish are choked by the toxic dump of nitro and polycyclic musks into our oceans.
PUNISHMENT because you can’t take an honest whiff of those slapstick niche perfumes ever again. Not without the cloying nuisance, that phony cotton-candy scent that sticks to your nose like a leech, while all you wish for is… this. Real raspberries crushed to a paste and spread across a bed of frankincense, 35-year-old oud oil infused with concentrated oud resin, and Edward rose. Grated ambergris and a sac of musk oiled up with iris dunked into blue lotus laced with ylang-ylang battered with mimosa sweetened by peach, roughed up by oud, and styrax… to give the jasmine a sharp vintage edge.
Perfume doesn’t excite us anymore. It hasn’t for decades. Donning a perfume means little more than brushing your teeth, as you go psss-psss and walk through the mist once your tie is tied. Will he like it? Will she like it? The label says Extrait.
“What was taking place in him
was totally unfamiliar, new, sudden,
never before experienced.”
A pheromonal spritz that lets raw castoreum bathed in the finest jasmines on Earth wake up a long-dormant naked attraction — not just carnal, but silage that also commands power and prestige… because fragrance once possessed such force — before musc got stripped of its K, and amber lost its gris and all we’re left with are lone molecules vying for the sexiest bottle and box.
You might even get a nice card with a long list of 16-syllable petrotoxins that tell you about all the exquisite flowers and spice and leather and sweat and oak you aren’t allowed to smell anymore. Hence, Crime & Punishment sits tight in red-tanned, full-grain Italian calf hide cut and stitched and worked by a Sufi who still wears an old pocket watch, and has an Elven eye for art. No card, I’m afraid.
You couldn’t dream up a more austere fragrance. An aristocratic scent you wear as a suit that signals that perfume means more to you than just a smell.
Noir. Intense. Not because the labels say so, but because there’s more musk in your bottle than in all the niche and luxury perfume shelves of the world combined. More oud and amber and coffee and cedar drenched in black tea than any noir celebrity poster will ever let your nose feast on, or any bootlegger can fake.
EO Parfums are signature scents. You’ll smell the shared DNA run through them: High doses of all the exalting fixatives dissolving in the most sought-after ingredients in the world of perfumery. This is not a claim about the perfumer, but nature’s gift to the perfumer.
Not only do you get the finest possible aromatics in their purest form, but the carrier isn’t just straight alcohol either. Instead, the entire composition is beefed up ten-fold with both raw Siberian musk and vintage Tanzanian sandalwood tinctures. To my knowledge, this has never been done. But it’s not about it being the fist of its kind — it’s what the creamy butter-spicy sweetness of red Tanzanian osyris does to the scent of the perfume; to the enhanced projection, longevity, and the fragrant trail it leaves in your wake.
When you smell any EO perfume, you know the nose behind them. You know the toil and expertise it took to bring them to life. Most importantly, you smell the superior class of aromatics that makes them stand out and engrave that EO signature. Agarwood matured for decades. Sandalwood harvested a lifetime ago. Jasmine they hardly grow anymore. Scents with SOUL. The kind of fragrance Avicenna had in mind when he brought the first drop of rose to life.
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word,
is what people fear most.”
I smell a scent revolution coming, and Crime & Punishment stands in the front line. So, pause the pop music, flush down that bottled laundry detergent masked as ‘perfume,’ roll up your sleeves, and don the oud defiantly.
PRE-LAUNCH SPECIAL: Order today and you’ll also receive two sandalwood infusions (.3gr each) of the Siberian musk and beach-combed Jamaican ambergris, and a tincture (1ml) of the Tanzanian osyris used in the making of your perfume as a free gift along with your purchase.
Ships 25 February.
