Against Nature

Timothy Han is a really interesting, compelling perfumer based in the UK. His background is in fashion and he came out with this fantastic line of fragrances where each one is so specific and has a point of view and is inspired by and named after a specific novel.

The one I want to talk about is Against Nature because I love the scent and I'm a big fan of the book. Against Nature is also known as Arrheeburgh and it was written in the late 19th century by Jorska Huismann and it's a really crazy story. The main character is a well-to-do upper-middle-class guy who decides that he rejects the bourgeois society that he was born into and decides to seclude himself and live this world that is so thoroughly aesthetically his own creation. He's such an eccentric guy but the reason why I loved this book is because all of these incredible descriptions of scenes and objects. It was just really a feast for the imagination and I think that that inspiration you can definitely smell in the fragrance.

For example, the main character has a garden of rare poisonous tropical plants as you do and this fragrance really has this interesting combination of green herbal notes but they're metallic and otherworldly. It's not what you expect from a naturalistic green scent. It's listed as lacquer is one of the notes and I actually remember a scene in the novel where he decides to have a dinner party where everything's black. The food is black, the plates are black, every detail is black and that really stuck in my mind and I tried to imagine what does that smell like? What does lacquer smell like?

It has a really wonderful benzo and amber base but mostly it's these sharp bright metallic and green herbal notes that carry this fragrance through. It's like nothing I know and like the book it's supposed to be a celebration of natural and artificial and it really comes through. It's a very distinctive, very interesting fragrance and it lasts very long. I highly recommend it Against Nature from Timothy Han.