The desert airs of Marfa, cosmic axis of West Texas. Creosote shrubs and sumac primed with Chihuahuan mesa woods–mesquite, oak, and pinyon pine. Created for our friends at the El Cosmico hotel in Marfa. TOP NOTES desert shrubs desert pepper pinyon pine HEART NOTES creosote oak BASE NOTES dry sand accord khella shrub wax Marfa, Texas is a not-so-secret place far from anywhere else. Since Donald Judd brought his art (and then artists) to this crossroads in the high plains desert, people have flocked from all over the world to experience its magic. Something is in the air. UFO-like lights dot the horizon. (I saw them with my own eyes!) A confluence of cultures leads to a very free-spirited ethos. Liz Lambert started El Cosmico, her boutique campground, she says as an oasis for “nomads.” For this scent, I made a study of the plants surrounding the town in the Chihuahuan desert. Many of these desert plants have oils with strong aromas that they produce presumably to ward off predators, protect from the harsh wind and sun or to retain moisture. For the perfume that would take you there, I placed desert pepper and sumac, with the landscape dominant creosote (that smells of oily desert rain), over a sand accord with dry mesquite wood. The scent is otherworldly like the area. I don’t think it smells like anything else. It is white smoke, the magic of aldehydes, and strange alien plants in the desert.