Cape Town’s Wild Olive Artisans and UK landscape architect JoJo Gibbons raise consciousness through scent
Beyond the typical floral or spicy notes of perfume, imagine a natural perfume that evokes the natural essence of soil itself. Perfumer Madalina Heneck of Wild Olive Artisans and landscape architect JoJo Gibbons RDI have been on a four-year-long journey to capture the scent of soil.
“Imagine soil, silently beneath your feet, encapsulating our identity in an illustration of deep time, natural process, and human endeavor. This below-ground narrative of physical and human geography is the foundation on which our very existence relies…” says Gibbons.
Both Heneck and Gibbons have spent their lifetimes exploring plants, soils, and scents. Gibbons is one of the UK’s most respected landscape architects. Her multiple award-winning practice J & L Gibbons is behind places like the landscape of the new Munch Museum Oslo and The Natural History Museum, London. Her work spans four decades, during which time she has developed a passion for soil biodiversity and an ability to recognise the health of soil through its scent, which is what prompted her to reach out to Heneck to initiate this unique collaboration.
Heneck is a self-taught perfumer and the creative director of Wild Olive Artisans. This Cape Town-based manufacturing business promotes the skills of artisans through its work for prominent clients across the globe. It has standalone shops in Cape Town and Bucharest – Heneck’s city of origin. In her perfume laboratory, she uses only 90 exceptional quality natural perfume ingredients, mostly from African regenerative and organic farms, and suppliers that she has personally vetted.
Together, the soil-passionate duo’s vision and experience have borne a powerful and visceral perfume that is simply named Erde (which means “Mother Earth” in Anglo Saxon). Gibbons and Heneck hope it makes sensory connections with fragile ecologies and landscapes that we must learn to nurture.
Erde is not supposed to be just a pretty smell. Its intense, loamy notes plummet the receiver into the depths of the dynamics of soil. It is a parfum that dares to explore the conceptual, by creating a sensorial celebration of our landscapes and hopes to raise consciousness at the olfactory level. It is environmental activism in a scent.
A message in a perfume bottle if you wish, “to inspire the notion of planetary health and catalyse the collective capacity of humanity to act through sharing and protecting the earth’s beauty and vitality, bringing back fundamental values to the highly demanding mosaic of contemporary life,” says Gibbons.
All images courtesy of Scout PR
For more information, visit www.erdeverda.com , wild olive or jlg.
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