The 1962 horror film Carnival of Souls mines the gap between dreams and reality, living and dead, the subjective nature of experience, and the limits of language. So it’s fitting that its namesake fragrance—the latest release from independent perfumer Marissa Zappas—is difficult to describe. As seductive as it is sinister, it’s a delicate interplay between creamy, lactonic notes and the last breath of a dying bouquet—a ghostly embrace that Fragrantica users describe alternately as “a comforting kiss,” “a dance with the devil,” and a “morbid beauty.” No matter what it smells like to you, it’s clear the scent evokes not just a complex olfactory experience, but an emotional one.
This is Zappas’s specialty. Renowned for her ability to conjure fantasy through scent, the perfumer believes in the ability of fragrance to summon past, present, and future selves. Her namesake line blends both modern and ancient influences, including olfactory portraits of historic female figures like Elizabeth Taylor and the pirate-renegade Ching Shih, alongside bespoke scents inspired by the astrologers, artists, and actors of New York’s downtown.
A favorite of artists and writers, Zappas has collaborated with numerous creatives to design signature scents—from Liara Roux’s Whore of New York (a leathery, cherry-scented perfume named after the author’s memoir on sex work), to Portia Munson’s The Pink Bedroom, which was featured in her exhibition at The Museum of Sex. With notes of “plastic doll heads” (The Pink Bedroom) or “hint of balloons” (Annabel’s Birthday Cake), even Zappas’s more conceptual creations remain welcoming and wearable.
With her latest offering, Zappas turns to the realm of b-horror for inspiration, drawing on the foreboding atmosphere of Carnival of Souls to create a perfume that opens with powdery notes of mimosa, amber, and musk, tempered with patchouli, incense, and a melancholic hint of rotting florals. At once intimate and off-putting, the scent evokes the softness of cashmere and the curl of wood smoke. “What I was just trying to capture in the perfume was the feeling of feminine ghostliness in the movie,” Zappas says. “On the one hand, it’s really spooky; on the other, it’s really beautiful and relatable.”
Below, Zappas discusses her creative process, and the inspiration behind her latest offering Carnival of Souls, available on her website and from select stockists.
How did Carnival of Souls come about?
Last year, I made a perfume with my friend Ruby McCollister called Tragedy Oil. Mel Ottenberg interviewed us about it. When he was smelling the fragrance, he said, “This perfume is giving Fired Church Organ Player, it’s giving Carnival of Souls.” At the time, I didn’t think much of it. But after the piece went up, I got a cold email from this man named Peter Sobey, who owns the rights to the film. He said that he had a Google alert set for the phrase “Carnival of Souls,” and wanted me to do a Carnival of Souls perfume. My gut instinct was just, yes.
It’s such an evocative, haunting film. How did you approach channeling those more intangible qualities into a scent?
Sometimes I make perfumes really literally—if I’m making perfume inspired by this picture of blackberries, it’s going to be a blackberry perfume. But with Carnival of Souls, the movie is so much about lack of language and lack of words. What I was trying to capture in the perfume was the feeling of feminine ghostliness in the movie.
It’s hard to describe unless you’re smelling it. One of my assistants, Mackenzie Thomas, said the perfume smells like creepy coconut, which is so funny and so true—it’s like creamy mimosa, with the ghost of a coconut note.
In the past, you’ve made olfactory portraits of specific people and historic figures. It made me think, what would a perfume portrait of you smell like—and what perfumer would you have interpret you, if you had to choose one?
Probably Sophia Grojsman; she made Paris by YSL and a bunch of groundbreaking perfumes of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. She is fucking genius. Or Olivia Giacobetti—I would love for her to make a perfume for me. Olivia and Sophia are both poets more so than perfumers. And there’s something that feels important about it being a woman perfumer, just because there aren’t as many of us. Or at least historically there haven’t been.
You’ve likened perfume to a prosthetic, in the way that clothes can be. Would you elaborate on that?
It’s an extension of the body. And in a way, fragrance takes up even more space than clothing or makeup—it’s in the air, everywhere. And it’s a means of self-expression. The interesting thing about it is that I don’t think it’s always clear what it’s expressing. We tend to think that it’s expressing economic status, or even someone’s sense of taste; it’s obvious when something smells expensive or cheap. But I think perfume means something different to different people, whereas if I’m wearing a sweatshirt that just says Gucci, you’re able to know right away what that means.
Getting to know perfume is like dating. People often go into a store and they’re like, I need to just find one. When really, it’s about trying something and seeing how you like it—and then trying it again, and over time, developing relationships, and deciding which one you want to take the plunge with. That pressure of ‘Which one do I want?’ strips away the authentic act of discovery—and when you remove that pressure, it can allow you to discover something new that you might not have gone for the first time you tried it on. It’s good to take your time in getting to know people, and it’s good to take your time in getting to know perfume, too.
