In Love With Everything Review
Fragrance

In Love with Everything Review: Imaginary Authors Conjures Another Fragrance Fantasy

A journey beyond the "guilty pleasure."

Join us Friday, Dec. 2nd for an upbeat meet-and-greet with Imaginary Authors founder & perfumer Josh Meyer!

Chat with the perfumer, enjoy exclusive gifts with any Imaginary Authors purchase, and sip a signature cocktail inspired by “In Love With Everything.”

1826 Sherbrooke St. W, Montréal, QC
December 2nd, 5:00pm – 7:00pm

As you might know, each Imaginary Authors fragrance is framed as the scent of an imaginary novel. And to understand the pleasures of their newest fragrance “In Love With Everything“, it helps to look at a real-life work of art: the musical “Xanadu”. I’m not talking about the famously-failed movie musical starring the late, great Olivia Newton-John. Instead, this fragrance reminds me of the film’s surprise-hit Broadway musical adaptation.

You’ll be forgiven if you haven’t heard of either; the original “Xanadu” movie was famously bad. While the soundtrack by E.L.O. became a hit, its perception as a campy failure was so universal it heralded the end of glossy musical film productions for decades. On the other hand, “Xanadu: The Musical” was a 2007 Broadway adaptation which tried to capitalize on the delightful excess of its source material. It was a parade of deliberately over-the-top scenes and cheesy musical numbers, mostly performed on roller skates. The plot of the musical parodied the film’s preposterous storyline: a Greek muse helping a hunky artist to open an L.A. nightclub. It worked: the production was so committed to the joys of a guilty pleasure that it flew past irony and looped back around to life-affirming. While the original film inspired the Golden Raspberry Awards (which honour the “worst” of that year’s cinema), “Xanadu: The Musical” was nominated for a Tony for Best New Musical.

To us, this is what’s going on in “In Love With Everything”. The fragrance is an electrifying shot of eighties breakfast orange juice, raspberry jam, and intergalactic roses. Instead of elevating its ingredients, it exaggerates them for maximum pleasure. The result: a fragrance which flies past guilty pleasure and into something even more joyful. Once the tart, pulpy opening eventually dissipates like so much roller-disco fog, it reveals a glow-in-the-dark, arcade-birthday-party warmth. That warmth feels naggingly familiar, evoking the nostalgia of unnamed childhood sense memories. Is it the “stardust” note? Or perhaps the “tropical punch” accord? Impossible to say.

Aspects like these are called “fantasy accords” in the fragrance world, and are one of the trademarks of the work of Josh Meyer, the Portland-based perfumer who founded Imaginary Authors. They usually consist of a cocktail of synthetic molecules meant to evoke a place, texture, or even an emotion. Classic examples of this include “amber” (a fantasy accord imagining the scent of the fossilized resin, not to be confused with ambergris) and home scents which describe their scent as “clean linen” (an object which likely smells mainly like the laundry detergent it’s washed with, or even like nothing at all).

Including these accords in a list of notes doesn’t describe a fragrance’s actual ingredients so much as it offers another dimension of storytelling. Meyer often challenges you to imagine aromas that are tactile and conceptual: Fresh Tennis Balls (“The Soft Lawn”), Warm Sand (“Falling into the Sea”), Arpora Night Market (“Slow Explosions”), Baltic Sea Mist (“Every Sea a Serenade”), Orchard Dust (“Yesterday Haze”), Salvaged Shipwreck (“Whispered Myths”), First Kiss (“Sundrunk”), and even simply “???” (“O Unknown”). If a list of notes is like a Table of Contents for the fragrance, why not make the chapter titles as evocative as possible?

Like Meyer’s other scents, “In Love With Everything” achieves the sensation of entering a vivid imaginary world. The fragrance embodies the gleeful, spandex-futuristic visions of the early 80’s (or 90’s, for that matter – or any stretch of time when the sensory world could feel genuinely new). Maybe it even smells a bit like the feeling of surging adolescence. Either way, with its refreshing, mind-bending wearability, it shows “bad taste” doesn’t really exist and that a “guilty pleasure” is only a state of mind. After all, who can resist the pure, ecstatic, dopey joy of musical lyrics like these: 

 “I’m alive / and the dawn breaks across the sky / I’m alive / and the sun rises up so high / Lost in another world / Never another word / But what can I say? / I’m alive! / I’m alive! / I’m alive!”

IMAGINARY AUTHORS IN LOVE WITH EVERYTHING EDP
Imaginary Authors
IN LOVE WITH EVERYTHING
Fragrance

Summer Scent Roundup

Our top 10 fragrances for summer transport you to destinations near and far.

As the world rediscovers the joy of travel, we decided to curate our summer sample pack with fragrances that not only are perfect for warmer weather, but also transport us to fascinating destinations around the world.

Whether evoking the coconut, vanilla and wild gardenias of the Seychelles, the coniferous mountain forests of Alberta, the yuzu-studded steam baths of Kyoto or the Victorian violet gardens of the United Kingdom, our picks for summer scents are a gateway to fragrant frontiers near and far, while also serving as the perfect scent pairings for sunny summer fun. 

Hiram Green
VIVACIOUS

Destination: Isle of Wright, United Kingdom

Violet purples. Lime green leaves. Sherbet oranges. Taffy pinks. Inspired by the candy-coloured gardens of the Victorians, for whom the violet was a particular treasure, this all-natural masterpiece swirls and dances with the indescribable, sweet and sour ecstasy of real flowers billowing in symphony on a seaside wind. 

Take a sniff and be transported to the Isle of Wight, an island off the southern coast of England where Queen Victoria built her summer residence, Osborne House. Walk the gorgeously manicured gardens of topiary and peak into the antique greenhouses, where fragrant rows of parma violets still grow.
Meleg
ARASHIYAMA

Destination: Kyoto, Japan

The air is thick with cool humidity as you stroll through the endless rows of a bamboo forest. Clad in wood and stone, a secluded “ryokan” inn beckons with the pleasures of an onsen; a volcanic steam bath of teal grey, misty water teeming with fragrant minerals. 

A remarkable scent illusion: a serene, deeply refreshing trip to the traditional hot springs of Kyoto’s Arashiyama Mountain, where whole yuzu fruit are tossed into the waters for an extra touch of citrus oil festivity. Notes of magnolia, tea and the most delicate cedar incense imaginable immerse you in gentle clouds of invisible steam. 
Monsillage
ROUTE DU QUAI

Destination: Rivière-Ouelle, Quebec

Named from an Algonquin word meaning “where rushes grown on the water’s edge”, the Kamouraska region of Quebec is an idyllic expanse of salt marshes, fishing villages, lush farmland and panoramic sky. Montreal-based perfumer Isabelle Michaud spent the summers of her youth here, and named this perfume after the road that led to her cottage. 

A marine freshness permeates the air, with a breezy blend of wild local herbs and grasses adding a deeply textured sense of place. Abstract facets of transparent flowers add the crucial emotional element: the giddy anticipation of a childhood summer about to begin. 
Vilhelm Parfumerie
BASILICO & FELLINI

Destination: Rome, Italy

 The Italians so closely associated love with basil that, in days gone by, a sprig of the herb placed on a woman’s balcony was a symbolic invitation to her suitor. Years later, the carnivalesque entanglements of Roman romance were bottled, still fizzing, in the films of Federico Fellini, who invited viewers on deeply personal joyrides around his chaotic, glamourous city. 

Smell this pastoral dream sequence pulled direct from a Fellini film. The fruity, leafy enchantment of fresh figs and savoury green basil blends airy innocence and urban sophistication, the rustic scents of the Italian countryside infused with the urgent zest of life in an ancient metropolis.
Imaginary Authors
THE SOFT LAWN

Destination: New Haven, Connecticut

If you’ve ever seen “Gilmore Girls”, you can smell how the verdant combo of quaint Americana, witty banter and upper-class anxiety turns the minutiae of small-town life into an endless epic. People in this part of the world seem to live submerged in oceans of power, history and tweed, determined to carve out their own slice of destiny. 

A trip to picturesque New Haven, an affluent city on Long Island Sound which brims with the seaside charms of New England and plays host to Yale University, is an invitation into this forbidden world. Smell the tart linden blossoms and ivy-covered stone as you walk between museums, as locals exude crisp vetiver and the mossy scent of the tennis court. 
Libertine Fragrance
SOFT WOODS

Destination: Jasper, Alberta

In Jasper National Park, the terrain is a soaring architecture of geology and light. Framed by simulation-perfect mountains patterned in abstract colour-fields of “wilderness”, each sun-dappled valley and canyon seems to contain more air than should fit between the water and the sky.

From this textural network of plant life and landscape: the smell of the subalpine forest in summer. Alberta perfumer Josh Smith magically transcribes it, with impressionistic touches of luminous rose to capture all that light, spirit, and spatial complexity. A chorus of juniper, balsam fir, and the trillion-fold factories of plant oil carpeting the so-called “Hall of the Gods”.
Gallivant
LOS ANGELES

Destination: Los Angeles, California

Like almost any massive city, Los Angeles is an electric clash of energies; of histories exalted and forgotten. Smell the hypnotic sheen of Hollywood, gleaming in the glow of vintage neon and sepia California sunlight; wild Pacific coastlines studded with aromatic sagebrush; desert-dwelling New Age millionaires shrouded in pacifying incense. 

Then there are the fragrant outposts of more enduring cultures that have collected in this place: Mexican neighbourhoods perfumed by garlands of intoxicating tuberose, honeyed narcissus and skewers of juicy pineapple. The soul of Los Angeles is a smooth and carefree cocktail, breezy and addictive. 
Heeley
COCCOBELLO

Destination: La Digue, Seychelles

A little archipelago scattered across the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles were seemingly tailor-made for maximum island beachiness. The famous beaches of La Digue island, like Anse Source-D’Argent, are flanked by undulating rock formations eroded into waveforms that mimic the cyan sea, and punctuated with palm tree exclamation marks. 

After brunch at the resort, you might take a trip to the L’Union Estate vanilla farm, before hiking past bushes of the rare and highly fragrant Wright’s Gardenia on your way to lounge lazily in the coconut-studded sand. One sniff of this cheeky cocktail brings all these heady, creamy, cartoon-coloured beach vibes sailing in on a warming breeze.
Goldfield & Banks
VELVET SPLENDOUR

Destination: Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park, South Australia

For one thing, there’s the slang. We all know at least one nugget of endearing Aussie shorthand, playfully reinforcing its status as a quirky upside-down-land at the bottom of the earth. And so encountering a flower with a name like a TV puppet, we are disarmed, unprepared for the sultry, summery, cinematic plushness of the scent of the Wattle Flower. 

A type of mimosa, they grow wild on Flinders Ranges, a rugged, sweeping mountain range in South Australia. Delicate yellow clouds, they’re softly powdery and almost sweet, the blossom-y aroma polished into freshness by the raging sun. How Australian they are: innocent puffs of joy thriving on the knife-edge of a wild and unknown world. 
Tauer
COLOGNE DU MAGHREB

Destination: Tangier, Morocco

Created in Germany in 1709 by an Italian perfumer inspired by the citrus groves of his homeland, the original “eau de cologne” began as a poetic intersection of place. Perfect for applying after a cold shower before venturing into the summer heat, these feather-light formulations suspend botanical beauty in fleeting waves on the skin.  

Centuries later, a Swiss perfumer uses the frame of a “cologne” to capture the warm glow of a Tangier sunrise, merging European and North African influences as the city does itself. A seamless blend of aromatics, 100% natural, pools like liquid sunshine: citrus oil flowing over bundles of aromatic herbs on a rocky landscape of cedar, vetiver and blooming Moroccan flowers.

FRAGRANT DESTINATIONS | Summer Sample Pack

Try our 10-scent itinerary and embark on a journey of fragrant discovery. Features 0.7ml samples of our top 10 scents for summer.

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