The new scent ‘Sonic Silver’ pays homage to Melbourne, the home of “urban perfumery” Flâner.
Flâner is a French word that signifies aimlessly wandering through city streets – it seeks to capture the transient experiences and fleeting moments intrinsic to urban living.
The sense of smell is a transportive experience that can evoke the memory of a loved one or be reminiscent of a particular place due to the area of the brain in which it is processed. The olfactory bulb handles smell, the structure in the front of the brain that sends information to the other areas of the body’s central command for further processing. Unlike other senses, smells take a direct root to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, brain regions related to emotions and memory.
For that reason, fragrance is intrinsically linked with travel and can be used as a vessel for capturing cherished memories and emotions associated with specific places. A citrus scented perfume, enriched with bergamot or neroli, has the remarkable ability to whisk oneself away to a distant Greek Island bathed in sunlight and conjure up images of whitewashed buildings and shimmering seas. Likewise, wood fragrances with incense, cypress or hinoki often define the calming culture of Japanese temples, bath houses and villages.
In trying to capture the scent of Melbourne, Flâner Fragrances wanted to uncover what defined the city more than any other place in the world. Co-founder Andrew said: “I’ve lived in Melbourne all my life. This fragrance really has been conceptualised over decades, taken over two years to formulate and had many variations to get right.”
On using tram tracks as their creative inspiration for a Melbourne fragrance, co-founder Mary said: “They are the connection to the beating heart of our CBD. It’s also the largest network in the world, with route 96 one of the top tram rides in the world. Metallic notes are quite common in perfumery and people really do like them – once they realise what it is they are smelling.”
Flâner has called the eau de parfum ‘Sonic Silver’, describing the perfume as “a window into the irreverent symphony of an eclectic city with the backdrop of a thunderous rhythm of metal.”
The formulation is equally creative as the artistic concept behind it. “We included base notes of asphalt and tar to capture the beauty in Melbourne’s raw grittiness. We also included a note called petrichor, which smells like concrete after rain, to represent the transient Melbourne weather,” Andrew says.
Flâner describes ‘Sonic Silver’ as a fragrance for the “creative, free-spirited and dynamic” among us. “It is the absence of commonly defined notes and the creation of a singular new aromatic experience that makes this fragrance so unique. It’s our most avant-garde fragrance to date,” Mary adds.
‘Sonic Silver’ will be available in 100ml, 50ml and 1.5ml options in line with their existing prices of $229, $159, and $9. The sample will be included as an extra in all discovery box purchases.
If you want to try this intriguing scent, head to Flâner’s flagship store at 191 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, or explore the fragrance online at www.flanerfragrances.com
