One of the unexpected pleasures of my childhood was Galatine, individually wrapped Italian candies with a distinct milk flavor. I say it was unexpected because I didn’t particularly love candy or milk. However, there was something comforting and addicting about those small square white candies that melted in your mouth, with their familiar flavor and “powdered milk” texture.
When I first tried Mother’s Milk, the newest fragrance by ERIS Parfums, my thoughts immediately went to Galatine. At first, the fragrance smells unmistakably milky, a little chalky, and strongly reminiscent of these candies, gradually deepening into a richer caramel-like sweetness (I also thought of toffee candies called mou from my early years). The sweetness is balanced by a powdery rose, baby-soft orris, and a subtle blend of impertinent notes, including leather, musk, and maybe some spices. On my skin, I get the impression of a flavored milk beverage, something that is so often enjoyed by children, but with an adult edge to it.
I was reflecting on the childlike aspect of Mother’s Milk and then came across an Instagram review that mentioned the fragrance being more “baby” than “mother”. In addition, during a conversation, Barbara Herman, founder and creative director of ERIS Parfums, noted that the milk accord was created to evoke the scent of a nursing baby’s head, so I wasn’t too off the mark with the milk-child connection.
Another opportunity for reflection came when I visited Frida: The Making of an Icon, the Frida Kahlo art exhibition currently showing at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
As I walked through the exhibition halls, I was captivated by Mi Nana y Yo (My Nurse and I) and its surreal and sinister message. Frida’s difficult relationship with her mother comes through in this painting, which depicts a masked nurse feeding milk to the artist, conveying an emotional distance during something that is typically described as a primal mother-child connection. I was sampling Mother Milk’s right around those days, and as I came across Mi Nana y Yo, I felt a connection between fragrance and artwork. There seems to be an overall tension between the artist’s lifelong longing to become a loving mother and the strained relationship with her own mother, just like there is a push-pull between the comforting and familiar presence of vanilla-sweetened milk and obscure notes such as suede, sandalwood, and musk in Mother’s Milk.
The “good mother” and “bad mother” vision is central to this recently launched fragrance, but rather than telling you about the concepts behind its creation myself, I thought I’d reach out to Barbara and ask her to provide a more in-depth explanation.
Barbara, Mother’s Milk embodies motherhood in multiple forms, going beyond the conventional role society still attributes to it. Can you tell us more about how you explored motherhood in the fragrance?
Rather than just shoving a box of candies and giving Mom roses on Mother’s Day, a real celebration of Motherhood (especially when so much is expected of women and caretakers and so little given back, not to mention the punishment they often receive for not being perfect) would be to look at how hard the job is. Hence, we should take a close look at the fantasies (in the Freudian and cultural sense) we have about what mothers should be — all good, all giving; or “bad” because they’re imperfect or have a life of their own.
One of the “good” mothers in the mood board is Paris Is Burning star Angie Xtravaganza, Mother of the House of Xtravaganza. As a trans Mother of the ballroom House’s children, she exemplified the “good” mother: she offered her children everything and helped them with everything and sacrificed for them. The “bad” mother in the mood board was Courtney Love of Hole. As a Gen X-er, I remember her getting vilified for being a bad mother, while mourning the death of her husband and releasing a ground-breaking album. Live Through This features visceral songs centered around the metaphor of milk – from the perspective of a child and from the perspective of a mother (Softer, Softest; I Think I Would Die). You could see the contradictions, hypocrisy and impossibility in the expectations of being both a mother and a separate person, especially in someone like Courtney Love, an ambitious artist who happened to also be a mother. It was as if she was being punished for being anything besides a mother. All of these layered stories are like the cultural accords and facets of the perfume, cultural fragments that weave and blend into each other, never staying complete or singular.
After reading the description and notes and later trying the fragrance, I wondered whether Mother’s Milk could be your take on rose. While your work transcends single-note themes, would you say rose (and maybe what it symbolizes) is central in this creation?
Rose is an accent to the main story: Milk, namely Mother’s Milk. Like many ERIS perfumes, the idea came about first as a name. MAC had a perfume line, and one of the fragrances smelled so milky to me that I described it in my blog (and maybe in my book?), as the smell of mother’s milk, of a lactating mother after chewing ginger candies. I guess this is where my mind went to describe what seemed to me to be the ultimate, most hardcore milk scent.
I didn’t revisit this idea until a few years ago, when a dizzying and almost encyclopedic number of gourmand perfumes came out, inspired by various cakes, pies, cookies, candies, desserts and latte-like drinks came out. Why are people craving these scents, I wondered. And the obvious answer was: They’re looking for simple comfort. So, I thought, how can ERIS take part in this conversation while still remaining ERIS? I mean, can you imagine an ERIS latte perfume?
And that’s where the phrase mother’s milk came back into my mind. Mother’s Milk is the origin of our tastes for comfort, the primordial gourmand. And from there, I thought that the fragrance could be an inquiry into both the cultural and social institution of motherhood and the gourmand category, at the same time. For the first, it seemed like Mother’s Day and its association with token gifts — candies, perfume, flowers — could be a way into telling the story. And that’s where rose came in. (In the mood board, a single rose is part of the perfume story.) So, all these swirling associations (typical!) are part of the story.
Can you share a bit about how Mother’s Milk developed behind the scenes and how you and your longtime collaborator, perfumer Antoine Lie, worked together to bring it to life?
It developed as it almost always does. I gave Antoine the perfume name, the perfume brief, which was almost exactly the press release we shared. (I knew exactly what I wanted from the beginning.) I gave him a mood board, and I said it needed to be the milkiest thing he could create. I wanted a meditation on good and bad mothers, that it was taking on simplistic gourmands by offering something dark and disquieting, representing the “bad” mother but mostly what a child would feel when she wasn’t The Giving Tree level of a giver. I asked for a touch of rose, to represent a Mother’s Day gift, and maybe orris to make it super-creamy and soft. (It turns out later that when Antoine drew upon the scent of his baby’s head as the milk accord, that orris was one of his associations. It also turns out that Atelier Français des Matières just happened to start working with a Bavarian orris farmer and had acquired gorgeous orris butter. So, it was synchronicity!)
There’s an image in the mood board of a drinking woman (bad mother!), so in the early mods Antoine tried to add a booze accord, but it didn’t work. It was too harsh and overpowering. He settled on suede / leather to add an animalic, dark, disquieting element.
The process was really a back and forth of balancing “sweet and comforting” with “dark and disquieting” until we were both happy! And of course, at the center: the scent of his baby’s head, almost like a diffuser or conduit of the scent of her mother’s breast milk.
A few notes about Mother’s Milk from the brand:
MOTHER’S MILK, a milky floral animalic perfume by ERIS explores fantasies of the “Good” and “Bad” mother through scent. It’s an olfactory montage of milky vanilla, a whisper of rose, the soft-focus blur of buttery Orris (from the precious dried roots of Iris flowers), and a hint of darkness.
That dissonant, slightly dark note in MOTHER’S MILK disrupts the simplistic comfort that can be found in most gourmand fragrances, reminding us that perfume is an adult pleasure.
COMPOSITION: Damascena Rose Oil (Bulgaria), Milk accord, Suede accord, Orris butter (Bavaria), Vanilla, Cacao (Colombia, US extract), Musk accord, Sandalwood (50ml, Extrait concentration 20%)
Additional words from the brand:
The entire “gourmand” category of perfume could be said to derive from a primordial inspiration: mother’s milk.”
“MOTHER’S MILK by ERIS explores, through scent, the fantasies of the “Good” and “Bad” mother. Sumptuous, comforting, sensual, yet challenging. It’s so Mother.”
“In Mother’s Milk, I was asked to create an extremely milky fragrance that symbolized children’s fantasies of their mothers as either ‘good’ or ‘bad. ’For the ‘Good Mother,’ I drew from a fond memory: the smell of my children’s heads when my wife was breastfeeding them, a creamy and addictive odor of hot milk and Orris root. The perfume’s representation of the ‘Bad Mother’ was created through the animalic darkness of suede.” – Antoine Lie, Perfumer, ALOE (Paris)
Named after Eris, the goddess of discord and chaos, ERIS Parfums pays homage to dark and disruptive beauty through singular and enticing fragrances. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed many conversations with Barbara, who is one of the most visionary and innovative people in the indie fragrance scene.
The sample of Mother’s Milk was kindly gifted by the brand. Photo taken by me.
Browse the brand website and read my own reviews of other ERIS fragrances below:
