Close your eyes and movie the experience of a fall. Feel it in your body – the shock and sudden jolt of that first moment whenever you trip, the short intake of breath and heart swoop, the adrenaline pumping as you hit the bottom. Then the calm stillness as you lie there; taking stock of your limbs and extremities. Now take into consideration what that smells like. It’s probably not something you’ve considered before – how one might represent the act of falling down through scent – but a recent fragrance from Australian label Ramp Tramp Tramp Stamp goals to do exactly that.

“As much as tripping will be quite a painful or unpleasant experience, as a slipshod person myself I do really appreciate the sense of being fully in my body,” says Niamh Galea, the founder and designer behind RTTS. “The adrenaline pulsing and the stillness whenever you land and check yourself; ‘OK nothing’s broken, I’m OK, let me pause for a moment and regroup.’”

Falling huile de parfum is the brand’s first perfume and is designed to take you on an olfactory journey that matches the full-body experience of falling. Created in partnership with Australia-based Kiwi perfumer Samantha Copland, the fragrance brings together notes of native Australian anise myrtle and rose absolute (the zinging jolt of the trip); violet leaf and dill weed (the moment of impact); and tonka bean, native Australian buddawood and vanilla absolute (the calming warmth and stillness felt after the autumn).

Collectively, the notes capture the bizarre pleasure of shock and the afterglow that may come from falling – not only flat in your face, physically, but romantically as well; the fragrance was initially inspired by a poem Galea wrote about heartbreak, falling in love, losing your path and finding something higher. “All my collections begin with a poem I’ve written and I felt that this one would make a extremely special smell,” she says.

Until now, these collections were centred around clothing. From Pierrot bloomers and reversible Marie Antoinette corsets, to asymmetrical g-strings and see-through horse-girl prints, RTTS champions a kitsch, vulgar aesthetic that pokes fun at the thought of excellent taste, while offering “fit flexibility” designs that work for all number of bodies. But for Galea, fashion doesn’t stop at visual expression – it’s about constructing an entire multi-sensory world around your identity and that’s where the fragrance is available in.

Housed in a glass bottle, the scent is applied with a roller ball, turning the method right into a sensual experience designed to heighten the sense of connection along with your body. Meanwhile, as a substitute of plastic, each perfume is packaged in a pair of vintage pantyhose (“the sort that actually will rip and wreck your day should you fall,” says Galea) as a way to introduce as much circularity into the product as possible.

Here Dazed speaks to Galea concerning the fragrance, taking inspiration from Madonna and her ‘fit flexible’ ethos.

I like the thought of the fragrance smelling like someone tripping and falling over! How did you provide you with it?

Niamh Galea: The concept initially got here from a poem I wrote back in 2020, about falling in love after I was still recovering from a heartbreak. It was about an ended relationship but greater than that I believe I used to be mourning the lack of a path I had been working towards principally my entire life (getting the scholarship and doing my MFA at Parsons in Recent York) and the long run I assumed I used to be going to have in consequence.

The poem is about falling in love with an individual but in addition with a spot, kind of reacquainting myself with Australia, my home and learning to simply accept things not going to plan. The primary line of the poem is ‘Spring is a time for falling’, which alludes to falling in love, but in addition to failing, unexpected turns in life and learning to not attempt to plan the following ten years but slightly to be present. Scent has such a strong way of bringing you to the current; it’s ephemeral and is rarely as strong as the primary spritz or in our case that moment when it first rolls onto your skin.

How did you apply the ethos and philosophy of your brand to a fragrance?

Niamh Galea: A significant a part of RTTS is exploring fit flexibility, a term I exploit to explain fashion that matches a variety of identities; whether that be age, gender, race, size or sexuality in a versatile way, transforming in meaning and fit across all these bodies comfortably. I don’t see this as a realised solution but slightly as a lifelong experiment.

Perfume is the final word fit flexible object. It has the really unusual quality of fixing depending on the wearers’ unique chemical make-up; in a way you might be the ultimate ingredient in any scent. This combined with the shortage of bodily constraints presented by the physicality of clothing allows it to be truly democratic.

Your philosophy can be about rejecting shame (the brand’s name transforms terms of degradation into sources of pride) and dressing how you’re feeling.

Niamh Galea: It was really essential to me that Samantha approach the ‘fit flexible’ constraint from a spot that rejects normative ideas of androgyny or unisex, which so often just find yourself being very masc and woody or smoky – very like unisex clothing finally ends up masc, boxy and gray. I would like to cite Madonna’s ‘What It Feels Like for a Girl’ here: ‘Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short / Wear shirts and boots ‘cause it’s OK to be a boy / But for a boy to seem like a lady is degrading / Cause you’re thinking that that being a lady is degrading.’

She sums it up perfectly: rejecting shame to me is owning and being pleased with things we’ve been taught to cover or minimise (not only when it comes to gender but I believe it’s a very good example) and I actually wanted the scent to be unashamedly femme but flexible enough to appeal to anyone, which could be very much our approach to clothing design.

Was it essential so that you can include ingredients native to Australia?

Niamh Galea: It definitely was essential to each me and Samantha to have some native ingredients within the fragrance, in fact, Australia has such a singular and special flora from being so isolated and we desired to embrace this. Going back to what I used to be saying before concerning the poem, I wanted to essentially have fun this place where I’m. OK, it’s not a fashion capital, but we actually do have such a special culture here and in addition a extremely amazing fashion industry that I feel is becoming a spot people recognise as very cool globally.

The fragrance is designed to appeal to everyone, from skater boys to corporate baddies. Why was that essential to you?

Niamh Galea: I definitely wouldn’t say it’s designed to appeal to everyone, but that it’s designed to present everyone permission to find it irresistible and wear it if it does appeal to them. To my point above, I believe so often we’re held back by our assumed identity or labels, that in some ways tell us what’s or isn’t for us. In fact brands and marketing are such a large a part of this absurd idea; and sweetness can especially fall victim to it. What’s more ridiculous than ‘sunscreen for men’ or ‘conditioner for ladies’. It’s all just skin and hair.

I imagined the scenario of tripping over in the town, particularly whenever you’re a busy corporate baddie, rushing around, phone to ear, perhaps eating a sandwich concurrently and bang! You trip, you hit cement, your pantyhose ladder and you could have to take a second to breath, stop, be within the now.

Skater boys are also rushing around the town continually and are very much used to falling, and superb at being within the now, as a ramp tramp it’s one in every of the things I like best about them. I imagine them falling as they reach into their pocket for his or her perfume, their board goes flying within the air but they hold on tight to the bottle. Each these visions are represented within the campaign, with the hope being that they represent some type of spectrum people feel welcome to put themselves along.