Marissa Zappas is a new line of fragrances that launched in 2022. She is a perfumer, scent designer, and poet based in New York City. Her approach to perfumery merges her background in anthropology with her admiration for avant garde perfumes of the early twentieth century.
Petrichor is part of her Garden Collection. Each fragrance in this collection evokes an aspect of a secret garden: cold stone, flowers budding, dried, strewn about tea leaves and tarot cards, and a locked wooden gate.
Petrichor is reminiscent of cold, wet dirt, while at the same time feeling luminescent. It’s main note is orris, the bulb of an iris flower. There is a rooty, shimmering effect that is undeniably like the scent of fresh rain on dirt and cold stone. It is a cold, dry, powdery, dramatic, avant-garde, conceptual fragrance with top notes of damp earth and lemon; middle notes of immortelle, orris and vetiver; and base notes of ambergris, sandalwood, moss and musk. Petrichor is an eau de parfum, edp.
MARISSA ZAPPAS PETRICHOR REVIEWS
Fragrantica: Mysterious, earthy, quietly intense; truly avant-garde (as promised by its website description) and unconcerned with being seductive or sensual. After a very long and elaborate search, I've found a scent that speaks to everything I have been looking for in a signature and more. Lingers on into the next day, slowly revealing all of its facets over time. I haven't gotten to test it in warmer seasons yet, but I assume it would reach its full potential during spring or fall -- maybe even a cool summer night? I evidently do not have the poetic vocabulary to convey how enchanted I am by this fragrance but I love it... a lot.
