John Biebel reaches into new perfume territory for January Scent Project with Horla. It began to develop a more distinct theme than some of the others, weaving itself around a specific work of fiction (Guy du Maupassant’s story Le Horla from 1887.) Although the short story and the perfume are not direct depictions back-and-forth, they became like a haze of past and present, and reminded Biebel often of the surreal world we’ve been living in during COVID-19, sometimes traveling back and forth between studio and home, seeing very few people and being in a kind of sensory bubble. The main character of du Maupassant’s “Horla” has a similar relationship with a boat that is moored out in the harbor near his home in France. Biebel started to feel the presence of this fragrance hovering around like the boat, The Horla and it becomes an obsession to our narrator. People can become similarly obsessed.
