THE AESTHETICS OF SCENT AWARDS 2023

Creative director: Anliicha Hainstock

Perfume name: Stairway to Hell

Perfumer name or Team: Anliicha Hainstock

Website or Facebook: Damilii-arcrtic

PERFUME DESCRIPTION:

                 The longest nightmare, full of discomfort, burning in my heart like a blazing fire. Where am I? So hot and full of pain in here, my body feels on the brink of melting. Howls and screams sound all around me. The smell of cracked ground is so acrid that it is impossible to measure the degree. The scent of hot fire causes pain to the entire body, stinging the nostrils. The musty smell of sweat and human body odor, and the smell of blood or something that couldn’t be clearly identified clung to the air. 

                The sight in front of me is indeed hell. Or will it be the deepest hell and most tormented pit? I see many naked human bodies chained and huddled together in a large pan, filled with simmering black oil.

                Am I already dead? I think to myself. Maybe, but I also objected to this. No! It’s just a nightmare…but where did all these smells come from? Can people’s dreams smell too?

               It’s halfway between dream and reality. Suddenly startled in the midst of bewilderment, where do I go now?

               There is a dark man, a shadowy figure, that smells like Hell from the dream, standing at the end of my bed, staring at me with bulging eyes. I’m scared to the point of seizing my mind. Hurriedly, I step down from the bed, trying to run away, but there are sharp chains bound to my legs, cutting into the skin until the metal is soaked with blood; the rusty smell of iron, plus the body odor that looms over my head. I scream at the top of my lungs and am startled again. “Darn it, what a nightmare!”

               That dream was a strong inspiration for concocting the scent of “Stairway to Hell” because in addition to challenging myself to pull out the smell of the Abyss that was perceived in the dream, another inspiration is to create a scent that makes people aware of that evil. Surely there will be hell waiting for you at the bottom of the long staircase.

               I imagined many smells for Hell while I was making the scent. It’s a smokey scent of birch tar mixed with musty leather, like a smell coming from the depths of the Earth. Plus stinging spice with smoke and sharp aldehydes. There is a previously created accord used as the middle note, the “Boiled Beef” accord, which is a mixture of ANIMALISSIMO F-TEC and spice with Pine-Tar. Putting a little bit of this and that together, it creates a strange fragrance, that smells and hurts, even in small amounts. Uncomfortable, like being trapped by the smell.

               The Abyss in Thai people’s beliefs is the 8th hole called “Ahvejee,” the deepest hole, the most tortured, but the smell of
“Stairway to Hell” is the smell of hell that is born from the imagination and scent in my dream. I hope so much that The Stairway to Hell will remind those who pursue evil—to restrain the wrongdoings in their heart, more or less.