ÇafleureBon X 4160 Tuesdays Pirate Queen is the fourth collaboration in their bespoke series of Queen fragrances (White Queen, Red Queen and Dark Queen) and was composed to celebrate CaFleureBon's 13th anniversary. Michelyn Camen, Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director came up with the name and idea after hearing Sarah talk about “pirate perfumers, i.e indies” at the World Perfumery Congress held in Miami June 29th-July 1st. .As usual the brief started with "make me a perfume that I could love." Michelyn told her that she didn’t like aquatics and she had a love/hate relationship with leather (animalic in particular) so she was to start with those and see if she could come up with something she loved.
Sarah's pirate inspiration originally came from a book, Be More Pirate by Sam Conniff, which was inspired by the alternative society set up in the Golden Age of Piracy, when sailors who didn’t fit into the cruel, hierarchical class system of the British Navy of the time decided to start their own. One of the fascinating points the book made was that while regulations are there for good reasons, there are some very silly rules which need to be questioned, changed or got rid of entirely. Some of perfumery’s oft repeated rules include, “You can’t just make your own perfume!” As long as you follow the regulations, you can, and we do.
When Sarah starts a project she spends time – month and sometimes years - thinking about what to make, carrying materials around with her, waiting for an idea to form. With CaFleureBon x 4160 Tuesdays Pirate Queen, this came with Payan Bertrand’s Fleur de Cuir. At WPC she’d also been spending time with Emma and Alex from Stort, PB’s UK distributor and when they dropped in with this osmanthus/cedar materials which smells like animalic leathery apricots, she knew she’d got the heart of her fragrance.
Added to Calone, rum ether, cacao absolute, patchouli, Cashmeran, she'd loads of labdanum and styrax, Ambrox, Veramoss and musks, we had the Captain and her ship.
Next, the cargo: Sarah made versions with and without Virginian tobacco absolute, Indian saffron attar, jasmine, coffee, cardamon, nutmeg and cinnamon, Australian Buddhawood and Moroccan rose.
The perfume reminds Sarah of a schoolyard skipping game from her childhood which she adapted to drive her team nuts by singing, “A pirate went to sea sea sea, to see what she could see see see, and all that she could see see see was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea!”
The finished fragrance is the cinnamon, nutmeg, Buddhawood, narcissus variation, and it smells just the way Sarah imagines the atmosphere around our Pirate Queen, steering her ship in full sail.
If we must name notes, then we’d say it smells of rum, leather, linen, scrubbed woods, spices and sea water.
