For the last week, I have walked around my neighborhood reeking of decay. I don’t mean I forgot to floss away the remains of a rotting lunch; rather, I stunk of a perfumer’s interpretation of decay: of vampires and wet earth. Generally, I like to leave the scent of honey or dark chocolate or something vaguely cloying trailing behind me. To smell of mulch and bloodthirst is not a desire that often strikes me, if at all, so you can imagine how disorienting a task my daily walks became. Then again, what is the purpose of perfumery if not to bewilder?
In this case, bewilderment seems to be exactly what Focus Features and Heretic Parfum were after in creating Eau de Macabre, a scent inspired by the Gothic horror film Nosferatu. Starring Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, and Lily-Rose Depp, the Robert Eggers-directed project tells the “tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her.” Retailing for $125, the film’s corresponding fragrance was crafted to smell like an “encounter with an apparition in the cold, damp caves of Count Orlok’s castle.” By combining notes of wilting lilacs, vegan ambergris, oud, and cypriol, Heretic founder Douglas Little aimed to “fill the air with petrichor and electricity … both delicate and hedonistic.”
This is not the first time a Hollywood studio has commissioned a fragrance as a promotional gimmick, nor will it be the last. Earlier this winter, A24 dusted a theater full of Heretic moviegoers with the scent of blueberry pie to leave a “multisensory” impression. (I am told this makes sense in the context of the horror flick, though A24 ultimately opted not to bottle the film’s gourmand notes, instead sending a blueberry-pie-scented candle to select influencers.) In a post-COVID landscape, as studios hunt for unorthodox methods of luring audiences back into theaters, the growing craze around perfume seems to offer a mildly intriguing way in. Do you want to see another vampire movie? Probably not. But do you want to know what a vampire might smell like? Now we’re talking.
Eau de Macabre is potent at first whiff. I sprayed it at the office and felt as though I’d been bombed in the face by a pom-pom slicked with baby powder. It traveled quickly, radiating into the nostrils of my neighboring colleagues. “It’s complex in the way that it takes me back to my grandpa’s funeral,” Cut editor Catherine Thompson offered as we wrinkled our noses. Embalming fluids, chemicals, stinking condolence bouquets — it reminded me of morgues and funeral homes, smells you just don’t forget. As Katy Kelleher notes in her essay collection The Ugly History of Beautiful Things, this is likely owing to a molecule called indole, the chemical compound found in lilacs and violets. It’s also present in corpses.
The dry down — the process in which a fragrance’s top notes evaporate — is something else altogether. Like grief and desire, it is ever-changing: snaking around corners and morphing just when you think you have it pinned down. As it sits on the skin, Eau de Macabre takes on the try-hard girlishness of plucked flowers, an ode to Depp’s character, Ellen, I imagine. As the petrichor and ambergris mingle, that floral note gives way to something earthier, like raindrops on a tombstone covered in moss.
The fragrance itself is provocative enough, sticking around for a few hours before drifting off to its next victim. It does not smell like vampires to me. But it does smell like intoxication, and that, I find most interesting of all. Heretic’s Little has bottled a memory I know well, though I’d rather it stay preserved in amber, in the past. Much like Depp’s Ellen finds herself haunted in Nosferatu, Eau de Macabre is the scent of self-destructive longing. It’s intoxicating in the way that a desperate young woman arranges herself in her negligee, awaiting the arrival of a lover who torments her.
Eau de Macabre, in that way, is too close to real life: hypnotizing and relentlessly unkind. I do not want to smell of regret and dreams unfulfilled, so I’ll return to raspberry, vanilla, and musk. I find relief in knowing that I can always start over. Thankfully, perfume, like beauty, is designed to fade.
Nosferatu Eau de Macabre
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