Spite

2020 Eau de Toilette Carter Weeks Maddox - Chronotope Autotheory Issues No. 3: A Perfume about Selfishness Carter: I became Catholic when I walked Camino , and Catholics confess. So here’s one of mine: I lied about the story behind Spite EdT when I launched Chronotope. It isn’t the story of a eureka moment. I made it because I was raised in a small town called Tyler that was once the world capital for rose production—which is also a place where rose, for decades, was used to justify chattel slavery. Due to that awful inheritance, rose will never symbolize romance for me, nor will it ever be a convincing metonym for orientalized fantasia. I am unable to nuzzle into any of its smarmy mythologies. And Gertrude Stein was flat-out wrong. A rose is not just a rose. The scent of rose even heralds a haunting. Spite EdT, which takes its name from the opening lines of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved , summons the historical ghost many in my hometown would rather willfully forget or ignorantly ignore. This is a rose that is spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. It is a rose that is also a reckoning. Dave: Burnt-sugared orris cut with angelica and watery violet wrapped in soft leather on a base of ashy incense and warm, musky sandalwood. Spite EdT Notes: Bulgarian rose (that is not a rose, that is not a rose), orris, angelica, ash, violet leaf, rolling fog, the great flood, new growth sandalwood, frankincense, leather, scalded sugar, castoreum.