One sunny Thursday in June, I invited Mad Perfumista, Katherine Chan, out for an olfactive walk down Christopher Street; a chance to discuss some of the inspiration behind the fragrance in relation to some of the street’s historic sites. From Stonewall to the Dispensary and McNulty’s, not to mention Leather Man and a few others, together we took a look back at the past life of the West Village, and talked about how each helped shaped the final Christopher Street fragrance. From Katherine’s blog, Mad Perfumista:
“Douglas Bender spent several years wandering Christopher Street, looking for scented inspiration on every corner. As a former student of chemistry and philosophy, Bender can speak eruditely about aromachemicals and raw materials in one breath and then move on to the subject of countercultural movements in the next. His boundless enthusiasm for the Village—its people, its present day culture and its tumultuous history as a site of social struggle—is embedded in every note of Christopher Street.”
Thanks very much to Katherine for taking the journey down Christopher Street with me. I so enjoyed sharing some of the street’s hidden olfactive secrets. And thanks too, for the great Rimbaud quote. “A riot of perfume” indeed.
Check out Katherine Chan’s full post, “Riot of Perfume: Charenton Macerations’s Christopher Street,” on Mad Perfumista.
