SPITE EAU DE TOILETTE

A PERFUME ABOUT SELFISHNESS

Spite was born out of frustration. I had a formula almost completed for a classical rose perfume that was vintage-influenced, took itself rather seriously, and was full of animalic growl. But something about it wasn't working correctly, even after I'd spent months fine-tuning it. So one night, angry, I grabbed two molecules I hadn't used before—one I loved, another I hated—and shot a whole pipette full of each into the beaker I'd been using. And Spite was born, just like that.

I'm not here to argue, necessarily, that we should favor or prioritize reckless, selfish, or spiteful actions, but denying ourselves the ability to act on our innate, spiteful impulse far less than we could no doubt keeps us from burning down the institutions, relationship, jobs, traps that call themselves opportunities, and even projects we've worked on for months that don't need to grow anymore and should be discarded instead. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Spite is a rose that is not a rose (that is not a rose), full of ashy orris butter, green angelica and watery violet leaf which combine to hold the rose's tendency to smell bombastic and romantic underneath a moody layer of rolling fog. New growth sandalwood and frankincense appear in the base to smooth out the composition—and jacketing the whole formula are those two molecules I added to the formula at the eleventh hour, one that, along with castoreum, brings a classic leather aspect to the fragrance, while the other delivers scalded sugar.

This formula is an eau de toilette at 11% concentration. Spite has also received an eau de parfum treatment that stands at 19% concentration. The EdP—not just a stronger version of the EdT formula, but an entirely distinct scent all its own that even as this release’s inverse—is vegan and was released (a few days late) around 10:30pm on March 13, 2021.