Playalinda

Carter Weeks Maddox - Chronotope
2020
Eau de Parfum

Autotheory Issues No. 2: A Perfume about Memory

Carter: My first few years in Florida, I sought refuge and comfort in the sea from a pristine nude beach frequented by gay men called Playalinda that seems to exist outside of time. And through this perfume, which depicts a sun-warmed peach, briny sea spray and smoked shells, dirty hair and hot skin, you’ll spend a day there with a lover. Or, at least, you’ll experience a depiction of a memory of a day I spent there with one. He and I lost each other years ago, and I haven’t been back to Playalinda since. Part of me is even rather scared to go back—because what if they’ve paved Playalinda over, or built a condo on it? What if men no longer go there to love each other out in the open? Moreover, how can we trust our memories of people and places after we’ve lost them? As a perfume that challenges the fruity floral genre’s gendered tropes, Playalinda interrogates the trustworthiness of perception and memory—though it won’t provide answers to such questions. But the sea might.

Notes: Warm peach, suntanned skin, sand, osmanthus, dirty hair (ambrette seed), jasmine sambac, smoked shells (choya nakh), salt, sweet basil, white grapefruit, seaweed, oakmoss, copper wire, castoreum.