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The Invocation
Baku-san, come eat my dream.
獏さん、私の夢を食べてください
Said three times, into the pillow
The eater
The dream
The pillow
Preorder Opens
Monday, September 21 · 9:21 PM ET
The Moon's hour, on the Moon's own day.
Ships From
Monday, October 5 · 9:09 PM ET
The Moon's hour once more, under a waning crescent.
What a Preorder Carries
- The opening price holds. Order inside the window and it stays yours.
- A vial of something else from the house travels in every preorder box.
- Bottles leave in the order they were placed, and everything else in your order travels with them.
The two weeks between are spent filling, capping, labeling, and checking each bottle by hand, and letting the juice sit until it is ready to go. If there is something of ours you have been curious about, say the word at support@ashenfume.com and we will send that one along as your vial.
The Myth
What Comes When You Call
She is the baku, written 獏, and she comes for the dream you cannot carry. Her horns curl dark against the violet. Her body is fleece and smoke. She arrives without sound at the hour after midnight and she waits by the pillow until you have finished being afraid.
You call her the way it has always been done. Baku-san, come eat my dream. Three times, into the dark, and she takes the nightmare whole so that it can never find its way back to you. For this reason her character was stitched into pillowcases and cut into the beams above doors, so that whatever was coming had to pass her first.
There is a price, and every telling keeps it. Call her too often, or call her when she is already hungry, and she finishes the nightmare and keeps going. Your hopes are next. Then your ambitions. Then the dreams you wanted to keep. What protects you can hollow you out if you lean on it.
Dream Eater is built around that bargain. Her fleece is the first thing you smell and the last thing left on skin, and it is real, drawn from raw sheep's wool. Orris is the powder in the dark above it. Lavender is the sleep. Underneath all of it something warm and alive has come into the room to feed. It smells like the moment after a bad dream is taken, when the relief is real and you are not entirely certain what went with it.
The Composition
Note Pyramid
Wool absolute at the floor and orris in three forms above it, with lavender running the full height between them. Fleece, powder and herb, and something warm moving under all of it.
Top
Bergamot · Lavender CO2 · Clary Sage · Coffee Blossom
Heart
Orris Butter · Lavender Absolute · Osmanthus · Mimosa · Rhatany Root · Carrot Seed
Base
Wool Absolute · Civet · Muskrat Musk · Sandalwood · Oakmoss · Tonka Bean · Vanilla · Labdanum · Beeswax
The Story in the Scent
Three Hours After Midnight
The Pillow
The opening
The lamp is out and the room has gone quiet. Bergamot lifts once, cool and green at the rim, and is gone almost before you have placed it. Lavender CO2 comes up underneath it, dark and herbal and already halfway to sleep. Clary sage runs alongside, dry and slightly narcotic, and coffee blossom drifts in last with honey on its breath. The opening is short on purpose. She does not come while the light is still on.
The Dream
The heart
Then the floor gives way. Orris butter opens, and it opens slowly, cold and powdered and violet, the most costly quiet in perfumery and the exact texture of a room you half remember. Lavender absolute arrives beneath it, dark and hay-sweet where the oil was bright, so the herb becomes a temperature that holds the whole middle in place. Osmanthus drifts past with apricot and soft leather on it. Mimosa powders the air above. Rhatany root and carrot seed hold it all down at the root, dry and faintly rosy, so that nothing here ever turns bright. This is the long middle of the night.
The Eating
The base
And then something comes into the room. Wool absolute settles over everything first, lanolin-warm and faintly sweet, the exact smell of bedding with a body already in it. This is her fleece, and from here to the end of the wear it is the floor the whole perfume stands on. Muskrat musk and civet wake underneath it, skin-warm and close, and oakmoss holds the ground green and damp below them. Sandalwood runs creamy and quiet through the middle of all that fur. Tonka, vanilla and labdanum come last, and a thread of beeswax through them, soft as the inside of an eyelid. The bad dream is gone. So is a little of everything else.
Sleep well now.
Ask again, and ask carefully.
The Reliquary
Materials of Worth
The baku was assembled from the pieces left over once the gods had finished every other animal. This one was assembled the same way, out of the most expensive parts on the bench.
The Fleece
Wool Absolute
Ovis aries
Raw sheep's fleece carries a grease of its own, secreted to keep weather off the animal, and it is the one part of the fleece that holds a scent. Scour the wool and that grease comes away. Work it further and what is left is wool absolute, a thick, honeyed, lanolin-warm material that almost no one keeps on a bench because almost no one knows what to do with it.
It smells like a living animal at rest. Warm skin, clean fur, a faint sweetness underneath, and a quiet barnyard edge that stays well the far side of dirty. Nothing synthetic gets close. Musks can suggest skin and resins can suggest warmth, and only this smells like the body and the bedding at the same time.
In Dream Eater it is the floor. It arrives early in the drydown and it is still there at the end of the wear, holding the orris powder above it and the civet and muskrat below, and the three of them settle into one warm surface instead of three separate animals. Every soft thing in this perfume is standing on it.
Her body is fleece in the art because her body is fleece in the bottle.
The Crown
Orris
Iris pallida
Orris is the rhizome of the iris, and it is the costliest flower material a perfumer can buy. The scent is absent from the fresh root. It has to be made by time. The rhizomes are lifted, cleaned and then left to dry for three to five years, and across those years the compounds sleeping in the root break down slowly in the air into irones, which are the molecules that smell of violet and powder and cold suede. Only then is the root worth distilling, and after all that waiting the yield is famously small.
Three forms of it sit in this bottle, each chosen for something the others cannot do. The resinoid for weight and for the length it holds. The tincture for the cold powdered lift at the top of the heart. The butter for the violet suede underneath, which only the butter gives. A house orris accord is built around the three to carry them the full length of the wear.
Iris runs through nearly a tenth of this formula. It is the reason the perfume stays quiet while all that fur moves around underneath it.
Five years in the dark, so that one night can smell like this.
And Beside Them
Lavender in Three Forms
LayeredThe oil, the absolute and the CO2 extract, run together at nearly seven percent. The oil gives the cool herbal lift, the absolute gives the dark hay-sweet body the oil cannot reach, and the CO2 sits between them holding the green. Used this way lavender becomes a temperature that runs the full height of the perfume, and it is what lets the iris float.
Osmanthus
PreciousThe tiny gold flower of the sweet olive, gathered in a short autumn window and yielding an absolute in very small measure. Apricot, soft leather and dark tea all at once, with a suede finish that reads as skin. It gives the heart the quality of a memory.
Mimosa
PowderedThe yellow pompom of the acacia, extracted in tiny yield and prized for a scent that behaves like a texture. Honeyed, faintly green, and above all powdery. It sits over the iris and softens its edge, and between the two of them the middle of this perfume has no hard surfaces anywhere in it.
Sandalwood
PreciousIndonesian Santalum album, drawn from logs estimated at fifty years of age and taken as a select extract rich in santalol. Creamy, milky and quiet, with a sweetness that stays low. It keeps the drydown smooth as the animals come up, and it is the only wood in the formula for exactly that reason.
Muskrat Musk
AnimalicThe musk of the northern river marsh, and the gentlest of the true animalics. Clean, softly leathery, close to warm skin. It gives the last hour the smell of a person, which is work a synthetic musk has never managed.
Civet
AnimalicOne of perfumery's legendary animalics, and the reason the old orientals smell alive. Feral at full strength, luminous in dilution, lending warmth, radiance and a narcotic creaminess that moves like fur. Held here to a trace, under the wool and the musk, where it reads as body heat.
Oakmoss
ClassicalLichen lifted from oak bark and left to cure, giving the green, damp, inky depth that anchors every chypre ever built. It holds the ground beneath the animals and keeps all that warmth from floating off the skin.
Full Disclosure
The Ingredient List
Everything in the bottle, named in full.
Open the ingredient list +
Declaration
ALCOHOL DENAT., PARFUM (FRAGRANCE), AQUA (WATER), LIMONENE, CITRUS SINENSIS (SWEET ORANGE) PEEL OIL, LAVANDULA ANGUSTIFOLIA (LAVENDER) OIL, LINALOOL, LINALYL ACETATE, SANTALUM ALBUM (SANDALWOOD) OIL, CANANGA ODORATA FLOWER OIL, CITRUS AURANTIUM BERGAMIA (BERGAMOT) FRUIT OIL, CITRUS AURANTIUM AMARA (BITTER ORANGE) LEAF OIL, CEDRUS ATLANTICA BARK OIL, COUMARIN, CITRUS LIMON (LEMON) PEEL OIL, BENZYL SALICYLATE, VANILLIN, ALPHA-PINENE, EUGENOL, GERANIOL, CITRAL, JASMINUM GRANDIFLORUM FLOWER EXTRACT, CYMBOPOGON SCHOENANTHUS OIL, BENZYL BENZOATE, BENZYL ALCOHOL, BETA-PINENE, TERPINEOL, EVERNIA PRUNASTRI EXTRACT, PELARGONIUM GRAVEOLENS OIL, ROSA DAMASCENA FLOWER OIL, CITRONELLOL, FARNESOL, SCLAREOL, ISOEUGENOL, BHT, TOCOPHEROL.
The Notes By Name
Bergamot (Citrus aurantium bergamia). Lavender CO2 and lavender absolute (Lavandula angustifolia). Clary sage (Salvia sclarea). Coffee blossom (Coffea arabica). Orris resinoid, orris tincture and orris butter (Iris pallida). Osmanthus (Osmanthus fragrans). Mimosa (Acacia dealbata). Rhatany root (Krameria triandra). Carrot seed (Daucus carota). Wool absolute (Ovis aries). Civet (Civettictis civetta). Muskrat musk (Ondatra zibethicus). Sandalwood (Santalum album). Oakmoss (Evernia prunastri). Tonka bean (Dipteryx odorata). Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia). Labdanum (Cistus ladanifer). Beeswax (Cera alba).
Anyone with a known sensitivity should read it before wearing.