Between Subculture, Sweat, and Sea: Filigree & Shadow’s YOUR LOVE INSIDE ME
James Elliott, the enigmatic self-taught Seattle-based perfumer behind the fragrance house Filigree & Shadow has always considered scent the closest sense to sound. Everything, from the names of his scents to the ethos of his practice is informed by a hazy, ethereal canon of post-punk and dreampop music. References to This Mortal Coil records, Björk eras, and My Bloody Valentine define the sonic and olfactory landscape created via a line of affordable, water-based perfume. The choice to eschew alcohol in his formations is not only memorable but of creative importance in my eyes, as the liquid of these perfumes itself is often far more milky, viscous, and fleeting on skin. These are beauty products that wear less as cosmetics and more as natural potions, evoking specific scenes, feelings, or indeed sounds. Admittedly I have yet to sample the entirety of his large oeuvre – I very much look forward to ordering more samples – but ‘YOUR LOVE INSIDE ME’ (stylized in all caps) has occupied my imagination, and become a recent mainstay in my own heavily vetted and competitive fragrance rotation.
This provocatively named fragrance is titled after a line from ‘Crush,’ a song by indie softboy mainstays Cigarettes After Sex. This is a thematic departure but not necessarily a textural inconsistency for the house: Cigarettes After Sex lacks the late 80s DIY ethos of many of the other artists found referenced within this collection, but via modern indie cred, arrives at the same conclusion. I find the fragrance itself manifests much of the more problematic subtext of a product made after an often-derided horny straight white man band. I actually really enjoy this about YOUR LOVE INSIDE ME – it smells like sex on the beach with a man with greasy hair and an edgier than thou podcast addiction. Like Taylor in her Matty Healy era, this perfume doesn't apologize for its sleaze, but revels in it. The most prominent notes are a mellow wet dirt accord from earthen geosmin, a salty ocean accord, Lapsang Souchong tea – sharp and overstepped – and a filthy cannabis-fig hybrid that smells like sharing a blunt in the garden of earthly delights. If Diptyque’s Philosykos is the mother of all figs, YOUR LOVE INSIDE ME is the dropout older brother, picking you up in a beat-up Saturn and taking you to the beach at sunset, riding a mix of overconfidence and Wheatus’ ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ sing-a-longs in hopes of getting some.
I didn’t always like this perfume, but I did always feel strongly about it. It’s hard not to, really. The sweet and salty mix of tobacco and earthy notes is certainly not for everyone. There are an array of lesser notes that come through in brief revelations throughout the pungent and lengthy drydown. Hyacinth, sunscreen, magnolia, plum, the progression of this perfume from start to finish wears something like wet dirt, everything you can smoke, semen, crushed fruit, chemicals. Some might call it offensive, I call it a summer evening well-spent.
You can read more of Audrey Robinovitz’ writing on her substack.