Choosing “A Whiff of Waffle Cone” as the next perfume to write about was pure self-indulgence. This is – for me – one of the gourmand scents to wallow in with delight.
Cookies, nuts, roasted nuts, coffee beans, some chocolate cream, caramel and so on is by far healthier to sniff than to eat. The scent is not overly sweet, the roast note dominates, which people either like or not. Everything that would be very sweet in its normal form seems to have been roasted or cooked a bit longer than recommended. The result, if you like sweet roast notes, is fantastic.
Imaginary Authors is kind enough to print the main scent notes directly on the bottle. On the bottle of “A Whiff of Waffle Cone” the following ingredients are named: vanilla, salted caramel, Saigon cinnamon, heavy cream, sandalwood, orgeat, scoop shop. The mix is supposed to resemble ice cream of the Portland (USA) company “Salt&Straw”. As I love the smell of nuts in perfumes, I must say here it is very strong. Maybe it is the mixture of everything else in the fragrance that creates the strong resemblance to roasted nuts.
If I could make a plead, I would ask for more nuts and more roast notes in perfumes. They are still not as numerous as they should be.
The colour of the perfume is a very light brown.
A word to differentiate “A Whiff of Waffle Cone” from “Sucre D’Ebene”, the PIERRE GUILAUME perfume we looked at a few weeks ago. The descriptions might cause a certain resemblance, but “Sucre D’Ebene” contains mainly roasted and burnt sugar, an ingredient completely missing in “A Whiff of Waffle Cone”.
Perfumer Josh Meyer started Imaginary Authors in 2012 in his hometown Portland, Oregon, USA. That is all one finds through an internet recherche, even when checking his LinkedIn profile.
He seems to have appeared out of the blue in the perfume scene, with no past behind him. We do not know if Josh Meyer has worked in other professions before or if he was rich enough to simply start the company when he wanted. He seems to have collected perfumes for a long time before he started his company, though. His love of books and stories inspired the name of the company. On the company’s website customers and viewers are asked to send questions – I did not. We do not need to know more about a perfumer than he/she wants us to know. It is the fragrances that speak for themselves.
The Imaginary Authors motto “conjuring and creating memories” shows the spirit of what Josh Meyer wants to achieve. Each of the perfumes comes with a story about literature or certain memories.
With Imaginary Authors the story woven around the perfumes is a big thing. First Josh Meyer creates the scent, then the imaginary book/story is created, that has supposedly motivated the scent. Afterwards the beautiful and detail-rich label and packing is developed.
Whilst I am not a friend of too many or too strictly woven stories around a perfume, because each wearer should be able to invent his/her own, the labels of the Imaginary Authors perfumes are quite fantastic.
The love to detail from Josh Meyer and his company is wonderfully expressed in those beautiful and whimsical labels. They are the most artistic and detail-loving labels one can imagine, just look at the one of “A Whiff of Waffle Cone”. Made in retro style, they would be worth to be collected just for their own sake. The retro style spans a century of style influence of USA pop culture. Even the caps of the bottles are specially embossed.
The only other fragrance company with a similar urge for detail that I know of is Fragonard in Grasse, France. Other companies also make nice and expensive packaging, but to keep the boxes or labels as works of art for themselves is not something to consider with most of them.
The perfumes have a satisfying durability and the price is more than sensible. Whilst some other brands ask for around 300€ per perfume (and those brands become more and more!), Imaginary Authors sells the 50 ml bottle (including story, label and packaging) for around 100€.
In today’s overprices perfume world this seems extremely fair. One tends to think about the margins some other perfume houses must make – but of course Imaginary Authors has no big marketing campaigns to finance. It is always good to see examples as the one that Josh Meyer sets. From what one can see or find about him, he is a perfume enthusiast and made his dream come true in his local community. Loving one’s own community or native area seems to encourage great acts of creativity. We saw the same with Pierre Guillaume and his company in France. Hopefully the company and its founder stay true to themselves when the big success comes and major competitors make tempting offers. It would be great if Imaginary Authors stays a quality niche company with international success. Looking up the company from time to time, just to check out for new beautiful little works of art became a habit to me and probably will be for many other perfume enthusiasts.