To arrange Jesus’s body on the day of his burial, Mary Magdalene anointed his feet with spikenard oil. The prized oil was an expensive luxury in those days, and the act caused shock and outrage. “Everyone said ‘she’s mad, we knew that she was mad, she’s pouring all this money, this really expensive, luxurious substance throughout Jesus’s feet, she’s clearly a crazy woman,’” says FKA twigs. “So she took down her hair and he or she began mopping up the drops of spikenard that were falling off Jesus’s feet along with her hair.” 

Spikenard, together with other herbs and oils utilized by Mary Magdalene to heal people, makes up the juice of twigs’ fragrance Magdalene, named for the saint. Created throughout the making of her critically acclaimed album of the identical name, the scent was a significant a part of her creative process and embodies the ideas she was exploring on the time – ideas around how women’s stories have perpetually been twisted and rewritten, and the way society is obsessive about boxing women into the archetypes of virgin or whore. This fragrance was a way for twigs to bring the 2 sides of herself together. 

“There’s the whore, the temptress, the mistress, the sex employee, the scarlet woman, after which there’s the Virgin. The sweet, the great, the innocent, the pure. I’m each, you recognize. After I’m at my strongest, I’m each,” she says. “For me, that archetype of the virgin/ whore is where the fragrance got here from. To me, it’s each a primary kiss and a very good fuck.”

Magdalene was originally intended as a private project, a tool to evoke the appropriate mood and atmosphere through which to create the album. Nevertheless, after seeing the impact the music had on people and the non-public connection they felt to it, twigs decided to share it along with her fans through her mailing list. The primary launch sold out in under 24 hours. “I had to truly hold bottles back! I just wasn’t expecting it. All of them sold out and I used to be like, ‘Whoa, okay, I want to provide a pair to my mum and my friends,” she says, laughing. Here, Dazed speaks to twigs concerning the story behind the scent.

How did this start? Do you mostly make scents while you’re creating?

FKA twigs: I’ve at all times been really obsessive about smelling good. After I was young, I’d layer my fragrances with things that I liked, a body butter or an oil. It’s definitely a giant a part of who I’m. I met Christi [Meshell] from the House of Matriarch in 2016. She got here onto my tour bus with bells round her hips, playing amazing spiritual music, and I used to be like, ‘wow, who’s this? This woman is every thing’. She’d made a fragrance for me. She said that typically she makes fragrances and might connect with the spirits of dead artists, she will be able to channel what she thinks they might smell like. I used to be the primary [living] artist that she’d done. She said that my spirit was so potent that she was capable of do it once I was alive. After which I smelled the fragrance, it hit me, and it smelled like me. I can’t explain it. 

From then, we developed a friendship that lasted a few years and we’ve each really taken our time on this collaboration. After I was doing [the album] Magdalene, it was such a visceral experience for me with where I used to be emotionally and all of the things that were happening in my life. I felt like I used to be growing into myself. Christi got here to LA to see me, and we spent the evening together opening up all of our oils. We were within the bedroom, and the moon was shining through these big windows. We had all the oils and fragrances and herbs out on the ground and we stayed up all night. And we made Magdalene [the scent] together. 

The album and the perfume are inspired by Mary Magdalene. When did you first relate to her story and think you desired to create something around that?

FKA twigs: After I was younger I went to Sunday school. I discovered it really fascinating how my Sunday School teacher would at all times talk so much about Jesus, the opposite disciples and Mary, Jesus’s mother. I used to be really keen on Mary Magdalene, though. I’d ask ‘Oh what about her?’ And so they’d just tell me ‘She was a prostitute and Jesus was nice to everyone, that’s why he’s such a very good person.’ I became fascinated with the way in which that ladies are portrayed throughout history. Then, in my very own much smaller way, becoming an artist and being in the general public eye, I became fascinated by how my history was being written, wrongly. How after 10 years of being within the industry, my legacy is totally twisted. Nobody really in any respect knows who I’m. 

Mary Magdalene is considered one of the earliest archetypes of the Scarlet Woman, the Dangerous Woman, the temptress, the sex employee, the whore. I wondered how mistaken everyone was about her story. So I began to do a little analysis into it and it seems that she funded loads of Jesus’s missions. She was a healer herself and Jesus would go off and heal people but she had a bag of tricks. She was known for having so many oils, she would heal with oils and herbs and tinctures. 

There are different versions of her tale, but one which makes probably the most sense to me logically is that she was probably the partner of Jesus romantically they usually could have had children together. In the event that they were descendants of Christ, the entire religion of Christianity would essentially implode. So by calling her a whore and a prostitute, it implies that any children that she has can’t be proven. So it’s a technique to focus the energy on Jesus and all of the sensible things that he did, and push her into the shadows. That’s what originally drew me to need to explore who she was and the tales of ladies on the whole and the way our legacies can often be twisted.

“As humans we’ve got a desire to smell something that’s a bit nasty, you wish to return to it” – FKA twigs

You said something the opposite day that I loved, which is when the 2 archetypes – the virgin and the whore – come together, that’s when women are at their strongest.

FKA twigs: Yeah, definitely. I believe society has an obsession with separating the 2. I’m each. But, from my experience of my life, I actually have to fight to be each. And every time I believe I’ve landed there, and I’m being each, you possibly can get knocked off. People will attempt to push you into one or the opposite. I believe that probably the most healthy relationships I’ve had are once I’ve been allowed to be each. My most unhealthy is once I’ve had a partner attempt to force me to be one. ‘Don’t exit wearing that. Don’t have a look at that person.’ Or once they have tried to oversexualize me and take a look at to force me into one other box. That’s once I feel completely uncentered and lost, and I don’t feel like I’m harnessing my true energy. 

So that archetype of the virgin/ whore is where the fragrance got here from. To me, it’s each a primary kiss and a very good fuck. It’s sweet and there’s an innocence and it’s intoxicating – you would like more of it. But then at the identical time, it’s very grounded with the wood and the incense. It creates this all-knowing sensuality.

You were saying that the oils that you simply use within the fragrance are a few of the ones that Mary Magdalene used. 

FKA twigs: We went through loads of the religious paintings of her and different pictures and stories and writings about her and there was rose, balsam, wood, incense and spikenard. Spikenard is de facto interesting since it’s quite a horrible smell in a way, type of bitter. I believe as humans we’ve got a desire to smell something that’s a bit nasty, you wish to return to it. So often in fragrances when there’s a tiny hint of that earthy humaneness it makes it really addictive after which offset with the rose and the wood and incense. It’s just very addictive.

It’s funny since it almost feels weird talking about it as a fragrance. To me, it’s a ritual or it’s a mood. I exploit fragrance so much as a tool. For me, Magdalene is a tool, it’s a tool that I used to complete my album. It’s the tool that I used to go on tour. It’s a tool that I used to bring together my virgin/ whore.

Whenever you were creating the scent were you already considering it was something that you simply’d need to share with people? Or did that come later? 

FKA twigs: No, that got here much later. After I made Magdalene I didn’t realise how people were really going to attach with it, it was such a private project. I can now really see the impact that it’s had on people’s love journeys and self journeys. I believe it’s the piece of labor up to now that’s had [the biggest] personal impact on people so for me to give you the chance to share Magdalene is a component of keeping that story alive. It’s perpetually imprinted, the girl that I used to be that made that’s imprinted now in a fragrance. Smell evokes a lot, doesn’t it?

How does it feel to smell such a private scent on other people? Is it weird for you?

FKA twigs: No, because I believe that fragrances at all times smell so different on different people, you add your personal a part of the story into the fragrance. But I feel able to share it now as well, it’s been a few years. I believe if I used to be in the method, it’d be weird. If I used to be dancing up the pole and everybody was wearing it! But now, for me, it’s a pleasure to give you the chance to share it. It’s taken 4 or five years to be in the appropriate place emotionally to provide it away, to search out the appropriate technique to get it on the market and into the world that feels delicate and exquisite.

Is fragrance something you wish to do more of? Do you’re thinking that you’ll do latest ones for every latest project? 

FKA twigs: Definitely! I may need a pair more tucked up my sleeve already.

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