Goddess of Love & Perfume - Our Shop

Our Goddess smells the way Sarah imagined that Aphrodite would smell if she descended from Mount Olympus to seduce shepherd boys (men, not actual boys because that would be wrong) on the slopes of Roseberry Topping, North Yorkshire. We make is at perfume strength for goddesses, with all the lovely things which Sarah had held back from using because they were a bit expensive.

The Goddess by Brooke Belldon

Fruity scents became a trend in the 18th century. The Age of Enlightenment ushered in a renewed interest in the natural world and perfumes of the time reflected that. Prior to this, people were creating huge scent bubbles out of an animalics - civet, musks and ambergris - because they believed it protected them from the Black Plague. Animalics were still found in fragrances of the 18th century; however, they took on the more traditional roles of basenotes within perfumes that we associate them with today. In the late 18th century, delicacy was de rigueur. A soft, fruity floral was just the thing to go with your floaty, muslin shepherdess frock for an afternoon spent at Marie Antoinette’s fairytale Hameau at Versailles.

Things took an interesting turn for fruity smells in the first half of the 20th century during the Golden Age of Perfumery. If there was ever a time for a perfume rock-n-roll, power ballad montage, this would be it. The discovery of new aroma-molecules was changing the shape of perfumery. Not only freeing perfumers from the constraints of nature, but also making it possible for entire new classifications of fragrances to be composed. 

Fruity notes used by legendary perfumes like Jean Carles and Edmond Roudnitska were bold. No field frolicking here. Their use of fruity smells was strictly for grown-ups, and they utilised these smells to fuel the olfactory narratives found in their work. Some of these fragrances came across as experienced, bruised and even predatory in places. While others possessed a freshly-bud exuberance and disarmingly easy virtue.

Which brings me to the Goddess of Love and Perfume. It’s a fragrance that straddles those two narratives. Sarah is a whiz with fruity chypres, and with Goddess of Love and Perfume, she’s demonstrating a fruitism flex with the volume cranked up to eleven. The fruity notes in Goddess reveal themselves in a kaleidoscopic, hallucinatory fashion in drifting Rothko-esque hues. These are underscored with generous lashings of lactones. Enhancing all of the curves and flesh.

There is a celebratory quality about Goddess of Love and Perfume. If you’re into fruit-laden perfumes, you couldn’t do better than this. But what I find so beguiling about Goddess of Love and Perfume is its undercurrent of seduction that borderlines on sinister. Once she’s got her eye on you, surrender is the only option. And why not when it smells this fabulous?

You can read more of Brooke's writing on Instagram at BGirlRhapsody

Perfume dialect: floral, fruity chypre

Top notes: plum, peach, raspberry, bergamot, yuzu

Heart notes: blackcurrant, wild strawberry, rose, jasmine, lily of the valley

Base notes: vanilla, oakmoss, opoponax, patchouli, oakmoss, vintage musks

Ingredients: Alcohol, Parfum, Benzyl Salicylate, Limonene, Linalool, Evernia Prunastri (Oak Moss) Extract, Citronellol, Geraniol, Citral 

Goddess of Love & Perfume is suitable for vegans.