MATÍ ° PERFUME OIL
Vibe ° Mitti Attar from the Ganges River ° Rose ° Sea Salt ° Cocoa
Matí is a homeland scent, made from monsoon rain soaked clays distilled in sandalwood, sourced from Kannauj. Each batch of Matí is ephemeral, a memory of that particular monsoon season. In my mother’s village, little terracotta bricks were a snack for expecting mothers, tiny pieces of earth chocolate. Betel leaf, the spicy green note of my grandmother’s beloved after dinner treat, paan, is the heart of this composition, an ode to my foremothers.
“Mati held the scent of their motherland, Purba Bengal, East Bengal, ancestral Bengal.When they tasted matí for the last time, they absorbed the essence of desh…They knew they might never return home again, so they settled for the memory of the earth, rain-wetted matí on their tongues.”
—Tanaïs, “Mati,” In Sensorium: Notes For My People