When a tip from a clairvoyant leads 23-year old Neal Orris to a rural Connecticut barn housing his deceased father’s secret obsession, a pristine 1964 Shelby Cobra Roadster, it is the getaway ticket he was desperately searching for. After liberating his best friend Ike from his dead-end job on the family farm, the two hit the open highway. Aiming for the Palm Springs race tracks, their journey is a blur of seedy motels, cool swimming pools, hot debutantes, cocktails, and cigarette smoke. Each stop finds the friends inventing new pseudonyms and personas for themselves, their innocent game hurtling into the depths of decadence and desolation. L’enfant terrible, unleashed?.well, not terrible, but cavalier. The Cobra and The Canary is as dry and sun scorched as the tale of Icarus and the characters that inspired it. Lemon and orris are a magnificent initial coupling, two perfectly complementary opposites. Lemon’s taut, floral acidity is compact and searing, like pure sunshine. Beneath lemon’s piercing gaze, orris remains resolutely diffuse, a shimmering powder that will suffer neither a proverbial nailing down, nor will it subject itself to dilution; despite its disparate nature, orris’ grand spirit is intact in every far flung, floating mote of its existence. Like the planner and the dreamer, or the turtle and the hare, flower and citrus are rivals that exist to balance one another out; in this story they end up in the same roadster, rolling out of farm country and onto the open road. Flying by fields of sweet green tobacco, just curling into rich honeyed brown, lemon and orris journey, edging closer and closer to their dreamland of desert. The smell of leather (car seats), heated by highway sun fills the car like a built in air freshener, adding an air of opulence to the escape vehicle. Hay fields tremble with fertile sweetness, tempting our travellers to pull over, snap off a stem and chew on it, while ruminating or swapping familiar stories. Still, lemon and orris stay on task, addicted to the rubbery smell of hot asphalt singing their speeding tires as they steer straight for the future, undeterred by the fact that the spaces they know best are slipping out from under them, without so much as a backwards glance. Dry and delightfully deviant, The Cobra and The Canary is an unconventional escape route from your average everyday.
When to wear: Hot, hazy weekdays when you can put your life on hold and enjoy a simple luxury like a fast drive in the country.
Notes: Lemon, Orris, Tobacco Flowers, Leather, Hay Fields and Asphalt.
Please Note: All full sized bottles of niche fragrance priced $95 or over will receive a complimentary sample of the same fragrance. Use this “Fragrance Insurance” for a few days before opening the full size bottle, as we are not able to accept returns on fragrances that have been opened or used. If you decide you don’t love the fragrance after using the Fragrance Insurance sample, you’re welcome to return your unopened and unused full-size fragrance within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.