“It wasn’t until I happened into the RUNDHOLZ shop in Antwerp where I first smelled all their offerings that I came to realize what a shake up Feb.14,1912 represents. It is the furthest departure from incense as a premise, instead unfolding toward leather through an intense, unique take on orris. Iris/orris accords are among my most passionate pursuits in perfumery, and what Landi has done here is simply unparalleled—there is practically no points of comparison in my compendium for the pungent depiction of orris as a root among others that serves as the strange, beguiling theme of Feb.14,1912.

The vegetal opening would be sharp if not for the milky earth aspects into which it’s nestled. Raw fennel bulb partners with cool iris in a dreamy yet piercing affair that provokes uncertainty in its wearer: what will happen to me when I wear it this time? Some days the nipping bite of this fennel-anise-licorice accord is very assertive, but more often it sits on my skin in intriguing balance with the chilled-cream-and-cosmetic orris. Deposits of silver underground.

The classic uses of iris notes are nodded to once the cold fire stoked in Feb.14’s top notes subsides. Imperious iris, interrogative iris, inverted persephonic iris, treated with a touch of soil and green-grey trimmings. Clean-dirty ambrette provides a lift that softens toward suede evocations. Heliotrope, one of the sole remaining relations to the rest of the RUNDHOLZ line serves as a whimsical flourish sprinkled as seasoning.

Feb.14. 1912 is a lactonic preparation of simmering celery root with a bunch of aromatics. Peppery and velveteen, it’s a savory fugue through uneasy designs, with the soft chew of orris’ doughiness sweetened by delicate ylang and coumarin.

Carrot seed—one of my favorite scents—further roots the perfume in a warm, earthy, woody cellar buried along the border space before the unconscious. In Louisiana where I grew up, the land is prone to flooding, so any sort of architectural sub-level is rare. This is a dreamy underworld with no reference in my memories, instead I now carry around, reverently, my own cool dark room where raw vegetables converse under some enchantment.

This scent is conceptual, abstract, where facets of many rich ingredients are well-blended and silky on the skin. It makes a bold claim about the expanded territories into which RUNDHOLZ might venture. I think it’s certainly the most challenging to wear, but also, I might note, the one for which I receive the most compliments. Feb.14. 1912 is a statement piece, sharing an appreciation of avant garde flexes with the clothing lines to which it is associated. Named after an early twentieth century Valentine’s Day, it is undoubtedly a profession of love, although it’s cathected objects are elusive and mysterious. Here is a potion for unattached adoration, for sating erotic hungers, and for boring downward into your mind’s own dark earth.

Together the four RUNDHOLZ fragrances evoke an incendiary cubism, deconstructing motifs like incense and orris, and rearranging conventions into unfamiliarity. They are performance beasts of mythic proportions, with very long wear times and trails of lasting refrains. If there is a drawback, it’s that I find it nearly impossible to concentrate on or even form thoughts about anything other than the perfume I’m wearing when one of them is donned. As with most perfumes offered from fashion houses, these are exercises in world-building to propose some ambience within which RUNDHOLZ’s garments may be experienced. In the case of this collection, the spaces suggested are dream corridors, filled with prayerful smoke which is filled in turn with semantic inscrutability and pressing, wondrous curiosity. These arched halls run between chapels and pantries; the password for entry is “strawberry,” in whatever dead language you prefer.” — Matt Morris, Fragrantica

NOTES

licorice
anise
fennel
milk
bergamot
orange
iris
ambrette
heliotrope
carnation
rose
jasmine
ylang ylang
leather
white musk
cedar
tonka bean

NOSE — Arturetto Landi

Germany, 2016

About Rundholz