Once a year there is the excitement of a new fragrance introduction from Dusita Paris, a fragrance house created by Thai perfumer Pissara Umivijani, now based in Paris on a quiet side-street just a short stroll from the big designer houses in the first arrondissement. Ms.Umivijani has proven herself to be very diverse in her scent creations. Her first three scents included a classic floral gardenia, an evocative and aromatic fougere, and an Oudh that meant serious business and took no prisoners!
With each new fragrance introduction, Ms. Umivijani adds a new facet to the collection, but one type of scent missing in the lineup was a beach or sea scent. I heard back in the spring that Ms. Umivijani was releasing a scent based on the ocean, specifically the Greek Isles and the Aegean Ocean surrounding them. Pelagos is the Greek word for seas and open water, and more expressly, it indicates a deep sea.
I was so excited when I heard the inspiration for the scent was the Greek Islands. It has been a life-long dream of mine to visit Greece, and even though I've traveled quite a lot, I never made it there. I'm getting older, and I finally had booked a trip for this summer. It seemed totally serendipitous that I would be able to test the bottle of Pelagos in the actual place of its inspirational conception! We were going to Santorini and Paros, and on Paros I had just so happened to book a quaint little guest hotel called, wait for it, Pelagos Studios! Everything just seemed to align!
Perissa Beach in Santorini.
If you're like me, when you think of beach or marine scents, you think either ocean freshies, suntan lotion skin scents, or bright citrus colognes. Pelagos is none of these. Remember how I said that the word Pelagos can translate to deep water? Well, that became very instrumental to me in understanding this perfume. Just like the bottomless deep blue water that surrounded us on the island of Santorini, Pelagos hints at depth and mystery.
Ms. Umivijani wanted Pelagos to represent some of the natural aspects she found beautiful in Greece, so this included the land and landscape as well as the ocean. Pelagos takes a while to settle on my skin. The opening doesn't really remind me of the sea. It features bergamot, litsea cubeba, and sea breeze accord in the opening, but I don't smell any of these lighter notes. On me it is woody. Back in May Dusita created a Zoom call to introduce Pelagos, and it seemed that people were getting a lot of different reactions on their skin. Some got brighter notes, for some the scent opened with florals, and some, like me, smelled more salty wood.
After about ten minutes Pelagos becomes like a compilation of all the elements surrounding me as I gaze out on the Greek shoreline. The rugged landscape of rock and stone, and depending which island you're on, perhaps some marble columns from 100 B.C. Heart notes of orris butter, white thyme, and tonka bean soften the wood notes I'm getting, and it becomes more of a meditative skin scent, redolent of the scrubby bushes and herbal vegetation, the tang of the ocean breeze, and the salt left on the skin as the water evaporates in the breeze.
The base notes are leather, sandalwood, and patchouli, and again, Pelagos was somewhat muted and quiet when it reached this point I found Pelagos to be a softer scent than the others in the Dusita line, and it's the first that I would call a skin scent. However, a skin scent seems fitting for a fragrance that is meant to represent the basic natural elements of a Greek isle. We visit these islands to be immersed in the beauty, to walk the arid shorelines with their sparse vegetation and on the warm pebble beaches, diving into the dark waters and rising up with the salty water droplets glistening on our skin like a thousand tiny diamonds, stripped to our elemental self!
Pelagos Studio on the island of Paros.
Pelagos was both a shape shifter and a crowd pleaser. My husband and I were vacationing with my daughter and son-in-law. Everyone tested it and everyone enjoyed wearing it, but we all smelled something slightly different. My son-in-law smelled florals at the start, which I didn't get at all. My daughter and I noticed more of the woodiness of the scent. I especially enjoyed the later life of the scent, with its subtle aura indicative of the moody dark blue waters of the Aegean Sea. I have to be honest and say that when wearing this on a Greek beach it really bloomed into something totally beautiful, and I've never quite captured that same feeling when I spray it back home and hop in the car to run to the grocery. It is as if Ms. Umivijani painted a beautiful scene of the Greek Isles, but in scent. It seemed to know when it was at home, and put on a spectacular performance! I have the 15 ml. bottle which is just so perfect for traveling. I enjoy the quiet stillness that is Pelagos on my skin, and it makes me long for those few glorious days in Greece. I may just have to go back there to experience Pelagos it in its full glory!
Pissara Umivijani is a talented painter and she did this watercolor to try to capture some of the inspiration she found in the beauty of Greece.
Ms. Umivijani always includes a line from one of the father's poem. Her father, Montri Umivijani was an esteemed Thai poet, and with her perfumes she seeks to honor her father's legacy by putting scent to his inspiring words.
"Tell me where my limit lies, so I may go up to it and knock just so gently to show I am human."
The photos are all my own. The sample of Pelagos was provided by Parfums Dusita.
