The obvious literary evocation in Masque Milano’s White Whale is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. However, this scent is not your average 90s water cliche. Nor it is your average ocean inspired fragrance in general. White Whale is alluring, sensual, salty, woody, floral, powdery and peppered. The heart — the ambergris accord — anchors the scent with an undeniable marine sensuality.
In Melville’s Moby-Dick, the eponymous whale contains a myriad of complex and interlocking allegorical potential. It is the elusive and allusive literary texture of Moby-Dick that compels contemporary readership to look through the folds of it’s form to mine for meaning. This complexity is at the heart of Masque Milano’s White Whale, fusing the marine to the earthly, the sensual to the material, the dreamscape to reality.
Ambergris and salt dominate the palate on initial spray— awash with ocean slick and foam. As the perfume morphs and undulates, the softer woodier and floral notes flourish over it’s marine bedding. The violet, osmanthus, and orris root provide an earthly rupture — florals, fruits, woods. Whilst the marine element grounds the perfume, it is ultimately a very corporeal and human scent. This combination of marine and earthly only heightens it’s dreamy quality.
Perhaps this marine-human texture is why when wearing White Whale, I don’t think of Moby-Dick — I think of mermaids.
Best worn with: Sophie Lewis’ Can the Sirenform Speak?, The French House, standing outside the Turner Contemporary in Margate, lying in bed with your lover(s) on a sun-soaked Sunday morning when sleep still coats your eyes, Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane, UNDERCOVER F/W 2003, Mircea Cărtărescu’s Nostalgia — and, of course, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.
10/10, one of the best perfumes I have ever had the pleasure to wear.
Find it here @ Bloom Perfumery
‘A Boy Flying in the Arms of a Siren’, postcard (1910?), found on the Wellcome Collection.