Janus Eau de Parfum

In the beginning—for Romans, at least, there was Janus, the double-faced deity of beginnings & harbors & endings & passageways, of duality & contradiction, an icon of public space and the home alike, the only god named prior to Jupiter in roll calls of the pantheon. Janus’ double-visage and shrine were included on coinage; whether or not their shrine’s doorways were open signaled whether the state was at peace or at war. Sometimes they had four faces, not just two: a Janus overlooked the quandrants of the Roman forum. Sometimes their heads were an old man and a young man, other times they were a woman and a man, other times two men, other times a man and a boy. And in what remains a dispute, they may have once been a living ruler.* Janus was everywhere always, seeing all of time, all the time. Yet Janus remains one of the most elusive ancient deities for contemporary scholars to understand fully. Their ubiquity has turned them into a kind of wash of generality.

Janus is like vetiver is to my perfumery (and perfumery in general): both everywhere, at the beginning of everything, and therefore also nowhere at all, really—not in many notes lists even if it comes first in each of my formulas. It’s endlessly adaptable and constantly capable of assisting me toward the outcomes I want, and it’s therefore vetiver is just ubiquitous enough as to go largely unnoticed in my work unless I point it out, which I only rarely do.

So as the Romans worshipped Janus during new beginnings, I’m evoking Janus now as I release the first of a new set of work for Chronotope I’m calling the Neon Series—a cycle of single-material studies highlighting some of my favorite aspects found in unique botanicals. I’m even bringing fireworks for occasion.

A vetiver’s vetiver for a god’s god, Janus EdP also shares a central contradiction with its namesake. Upon its opening, you’ll smell a bold, rich, dark, sooty, iodine-heavy vetiver: woodsy and gruff, even somewhat violent. Yet during its dry-down, Janus EdP transitions into a more traditionally femme vetiver-floral: airy, slightly salinated, almost aquatic, with unmistakable white blooms.

This wearing experience in effect performs the duality of the godhead—thereby also making its wearer complicit in & captive to that performance. Or to put it more bluntly: when Janus EdP is worn on skin, you, the wearer, becomes that transition’s embodiment. 

Two things can be, and often are, true at once. 

Notes include: cucumber, marjoram, magnolia, violet, geranium, vetiver, fireworks

*January is not named after Janus. It's named after Juno. (No relation.)

Orders of Janus Eau de Parfum will begin shipping the first week of July.