Melancholia

You are late for your own life, but at the same time, you feel as if you arrived too early to understand loss. MOTH AND RABBIT Melancholia smells exactly like this disrupted pace: green, floral, and innocent on the surface, burnt and smoky beneath.

Blackcurrant absolute, green apple, violet leaf, and bergamot open the composition tartly, crisply, and coolly. Dates thread a dark, sticky sweetness through this green freshness, immediately signaling that the scene is not carefree.

Narcissus absolute and lily of the valley create a strange spring moment: one is green, dry, and almost rough, the other clean and delicate. The recognition of beauty comes with the realization that it has already begun to fade.

Mark Buxton builds the composition around the ordinary tragedy of existence and the feeling of being out of time—late, but also out of sync. Loss does not approach from a distance; you realize it has already occurred.

Musk, Clearwood, and Javanese vetiver settle the flowers onto dry ground. Pyrogénée frankincense and cade oil then leave a burnt, smoky shadow in which apple and lily of the valley become a mere pale memory.

Melancholia is not the scent of pleasant sadness for a rainy day. It is lily of the valley and green apple lost between dates, burnt frankincense, and cade oil—a moment of realization that arrives both too early and too late.