Stone Cold Heart, The Perfume

Scented, cool, emotionless, stoic, graphic and melancholy. Think concrete, bare walls, urban vast haunting landscapes; no emotion. Yet if perfume is anything it is full, almost bursting with emotion. As the nose takes in the elixir it travels to the area in the brain next to the memory area, exploding the set of emotive histories we hold. So how can it possibly be a stone-cold-hearted perfume?

Image Iris Farmer

If perfume can be hot then surely it can be cool? So if we think about a perfume full of rich spices we could quite likely refer to it as warming, hot, spicy.

Think Cimomin, Ginger, and Saffron ingredients that are the colour of heat. So what would be cool or even cold?

Well, think cooling green notes, dark and smoky notes or even earthy facets. Perfume brand Altra has a scent that is exactly this, cold. A play on the duality of cool against haunting, melodramatic, lightness against darkness the oppositions in our emotions.

Stone Cold Heart opens with dynamic earthy coolness via earthy and powdery Orris butter from the Iris flower’s bulb. The elegant purply-blue flower itself actually carries little scent, but its roots hold the fragranced magic. The plant takes six years of drying out before any scent can be released but once it does the smell itself is suede-soft powdery with a wet and earthy accent.

Also at the top of the perfume find the rooty straw magestic power of Vertiver, more commonly known as Khus-khus grass. This fine grass emits deep peaty, damp facets, alongside a woody note and smokey tones.

Finally at the top fine Maté Tea, so expect the green and smoky notes from this South Amercian-style tea. Its greenness infused here also brings a smoky edge alongside herbaceous garden notes.

At its cold heart, find a sweet aroma with a balsamic undertone that comes via biblical Frankincense, soft notes offset via Suede, and deeper dryer wood notes warm with balsamic and slightly camphoraceous facets from Cedar.

Also along for the ride comes base notes of soft, powdery Violet for a romantic touch, Suede for more softness and finally an uplift from creamy, earthy, rich and exotic Sandalwood that wraps the whole fragrance together. Not just because it is such a great carrier of notes but because its facets echo back the other notes.

Altra has three distinct scent collections: Skin Scents; Altra Intense and Future Florals. Using 100% natural materials, each scent is 100% Natural, Vegan and Cruelty-Free. The glass bottles are infinitely refillable and all boxes are made from a single piece of 100% recycled paper.

They have partnered with Handle Recycling to ensure Altra components do not end up in a landfill. All scents are hand-blended in the UK, in a base of certified organic grain alcohol from Italy. Ultimately they always source from and work with ethical and responsible suppliers, many of whom have their own community and environmental projects.

So come in from the cold and warm your broken heart with a little splash of Stone Cold Heart

If you enjoyed reading Stone Cold Heart, The Perfume then why not read The Mystery of beautiful Blue here

Find Stone Cold Heart by Altra here