DIVIDE & CONQUER

NEBIRU × KATANA

I rarely build a rose I don't want to take apart again afterward.

With this one it was the other way around. Three roses that scentwise have nothing to do 

with each other -- Indian pink otto, Indian red absolute, and an accord I modeled on a rose 

from the seventies. Each pulls in a different direction. The pink bright and almost green. 

The red dark, jammy, nearly overripe. And between them this vintage accord that smells as

if someone had left the rose in a cupboard too long - powdery, dusty, warm.

You shouldn't force this together. We did it anyway.

Some things you don't build alone. This one carries two names, and it wears both. There's 

a kind of understanding you only reach with someone who works the same way you do - 

who knows what it costs to open a bottle you can't refill, and reaches for it anyway. Alp and

I don't have to agree on every note to agree on the thing itself. Brotherhood is trusting 

where the other one is going.

The Opening:

First the English spearmint. Cool, clear, almost impudent. Then it tips into the Sichuan 

pepper from China. That tingling, numbing prickle that leaves the tongue dead, except 

here it hits the nose. Italian citrus fruits tear the thing open, give it light. 

And everything turns serious with what lies beneath.

The pallida orris accord settles powdery under the flowers. Bourbon geranium pushes its 

green, metallic sharpness in between and keeps the roses from turning sweet. It's a 

balance that could tip at any moment.

Then the floor opens and reveals what was obvious all along.

Bengalese Sylhet Oud, deep and animalic intertwined with Ethiopian civet. Somalian 

incense wrapping the roses in smoke. Beneath it hyraceum, castoreum, onycha, 

opoponax. The old, animalic things you normally use only in the smallest amounts, 

because otherwise they empty the room.

We didn't ration them.

Why It Works:

Three roses that contradict one another. An oud that ought to dominate. Animalics that 

ought to drive people away. By every rule we know, this shouldn't hold together.

But that's exactly the point.

The mint keeps the sweetness in check. The pepper keeps the roses awake. The 

animalics pull everything down into the warmth, and the roses keep pulling themselves 

back out. Sometimes powdery, sometimes jammy, sometimes so deep in the animalic dust

that you catch them for only a second.

Divide and conquer.

This is when nothing is allowed to gain the upper hand anymore, you find out what 

remains when no one wins.

Two names. One bottle.