L.C. Chu

“It’s jasmine, an intoxicating single-note floral. I wave the blotter and sniff again, the memory coming to me not in bits and pieces but fully formed. When I was sixteen, my mother told me to re-create the jasmine she grew in the small garden behind the house in all its different moods. Jasmine in the rain. In the sun. Playing up the indoles for the pungent smell of mothballs, and then its green notes. I’d done dozens of jasmines, refining and learning each time. The one my mother had chosen for my birthday was a light and sweet interpretation, something suitable for a girl.
Luling22 makes me gasp out loud. It’s a rich, spicy bomb, not typical of my mother, who prefers soft fragrances designed to stay close to the skin and respect the olfactory space of those around the wearer. This is the opposite, an amber overdose with notes of opopanax, civet, and vanilla. It’s said when Giorgio Beverly Hills was released, it was so overpowering restaurants posted signs asking people to tone it down. Luling22 could give that, Angel, and Poison a run for their money. It’s the 1980’s in all its lavish excess, and it pulls a surprised laugh out of me. If it were a relationship, it would be the love-bombing of a narcissist.
The more of them I smell, the more I’m convinced my mother is trying to tell me something— but don’t know what. There’s a tea scent with a breath of buttery pastry that reminds me of Sunday mornings, a leather that smells like a supple old handbag, and a powdery rose I recall from one of Waipo’s old cosmetic compacts.
I sit with Luling28 for a while, as it’s a feat of technical brilliance that brings me an unusual feeling of envy. I knew Mom was good, but this good? She’s combined the ozone of an approaching storm in the top notes with the petrichor of the rain-soaked earth, giving the entire story of a summer shower, with an epilogue of fresh leaves trembling with rain. I don’t know how she made the green linger, when its volatility means it should be one of the first notes to disappear.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“Happy birthday!” I give Ana her gift, the new custom fragrance I’ve made her, which is Mom-approved, albeit after a few rounds of impassioned discussion and subsequent modifications. She takes it with reverence, then laughs when she sees what I’ve named it. “Rainbow Sprinkles?”
“You’ll see why. Oh my God, what are you doing? You don’t know if you’re going to like it.”
Ana has already uncapped the bottle and is spraying it liberally. “Shame on you for thinking so low of both me and you.” She breathes in and then sniffs her wrist, her eyes closed. “Oh, wild. I thought it would smell like a rainbow cookie— you know, the ones with the jimmies that melt into the icing and leave a little halo of color?”
“What do you smell?” I ask.
“I’ve been practicing,” she says proudly. “Your mom was helping me. I think there’s…” She sniffs again. “Coconut? Umm, yeah. It’s sweet, like baking. Maybe chocolate?”
“You told me you can bake three things,” I say. “Snickerdoodles, that huge cookie, and sugar pie.”
She buries her face in her arm, her neatly trimmed nails a vivid green. “Cinnamon?”
I nod. “It’s got notes from each of those desserts, but with some pine and some smoke, so it’s like you’re camping.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers