Città di Kyoto Santa Maria Novella
She brought a gyoza dumpling into the sauna once, the pork fat and ponzu sauce dripping down her chin as she bit.
Città di Kyoto Santa Maria Novella
(Fragrantica, Santa Maria Novella, Lucky Scent)
I turned the corner from Sutton Place onto 57th Street when she caught my eye. Drifting against the muddy snow, she wore a dark-brown mink coat longer than she was. The ends dragged against the sidewalk, sweeping up bits of ice and salt as she strolled like a broom. A matching mink headband adorned her skull, held in place by a scarlet ribbon tucked neatly beneath her bun. From her left shoulder hung a silk peach-colored scarf, draped diagonally across her petite body to the back of her right knee. I picked up the pace in order to observe it in better detail: embroidered white lilies, irises, and violets climbing up the small of her back, so finely articulated the flowers appeared to be covered in a light dusting of golden pollen.
I was closing in on her now, click, click went her heels, scrape, scrape went the mink. I was nearly breathing down her neck and I could smell the oily, musky scent of the fur, stored carefully in a cypress closet, as well as iris, jasmine, orange blossom, peach, and rose — effused from years of lighting incense and drying flowers in her pre-war apartment. Her smell made me dizzy as I inhaled it again, slower this time, a cloud of hypnotizing, slightly animalic powder sheathing her from the gnarly, cloying city surrounds.
Lemon-scented wood polish, a small pillow stuffed with lavender, the woods after it rains but somehow, dry, like the cedar sauna at the Russian baths when a guest brings in essential oils. She brought a gyoza dumpling into the sauna once, the pork fat and ponzu sauce dripping down her chin as she bit.
Santa Maria Novella launched Città di Kyoto in 2005 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Florence, Italy’s inauguration as a twin city to Kyoto, Japan. The perfume draws an unlikely parallel between two 2,000-year-old cities, both former imperial centers of trade, politics, art, and culture in their respective corners of the world. Hinoki and lotus flower meet a florentine iris and medieval herbal notes in a combination that is woody, peppery, and warm like coals. The marriage of two iconoclasts of the east and west makes this perfume a perfect choice to wear out in a New York winter. Last weekend, I had spaghetti Friday night and soba Saturday night. There isn’t a fragrance that would make more sense in a city like this.
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Emilie Engel is an American writer. She is currently reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing and updates her blog semi-regularly.
