Olm

For millions of years, water has been carving out limestone, and blind olms wait in the dark for a meal that the underground river might not bring for years. ZOOLOGIST Olm doesn't depict the cave with a view, but with iodine, algae, stone, and oily musk.

The cave water accord, limestone, and iodine open the composition cold, mineral, and slightly medicinal. The water lacks marine brightness; it appears still, deep, and saturated with sediment.

Algae add a green-damp sliminess, while a soft amber fleetingly catches some warmth. The contrast is reminiscent of the pale body of an animal adapted to a space where the sun never enters.

Spyros Drosopoulos builds the story around the olm, an aquatic salamander whose generations in the karst have lost their color and sight. Stalactites and stalagmites above it grow so slowly that their future contact is measured in geological time.

Sandalwood, oily musks, cashmeran, and Iso E Super later provide an earthy, smooth, and almost leathery texture. The iodine settles, but the limestone coolness remains around the base.

Olm is neither a marine aquatic nor a purely mineral perfume. It is a blind white body in water of limestone, iodine, algae, sandalwood, and oily musk — a cave you cannot see, but feel on your skin.