Bluer Skies (Whenever You’re Around) is a woody-floral fragrance by perfumer Chris Rusak, released in 2018.

The perfumer describes the fragrance as: Sultry without being offensive or loud. Fresh and transparent. Modern and minimalist without lacking complexity. Tenacious and auratic, resolving to the creamy sandalwood character of the real essential oil.

I describe the fragrance simply as “tension.” That’s how I perceive it. Pulling forces, action and reaction, exertion and transmission, and so much potential in between. Hopefully you’ll see what I mean.

MIRACLES

Chris Rusak explains on his website how the perfume was named:

The title of this perfume references the song “Miracles” by the Pet Shop Boys, whose lyrics celebrate the redolence and light a lover suddenly brings to the sky, whenever you’re around.

Reading this, you might think that Bluer Skies (Whenever You’re Around) is a feel-good bit of fluff — sweet and trite and quixotic. But you’d be mistaken.

Happily for us water signs, and similar folks with a melancholic temperament, this is no YA Fantasy Romance. Look deeper, and Bluer Skies (Whenever You’re Around) necessarily means that sometimes you’re NOT around, and everything reverts back to its usual state of dullness, gloom, and dissatisfaction.

Things fall apart (when you’re not around).

Knowing this leads to apprehension — grasping, clinging, longing. Even when the skies are blue, it’s not going to last. When someone has the power to take the blue from the skies, how long before playful trysts give way to conditioning and manipulation?

In this way, the name still makes sense to me, even though Bluer Skies (Whenever You’re Around) is anything but a simple love song of a scent. In my olfactory interpretation, it is a story of tension.

I’ve had such trouble speaking or writing about this perfume. I find it utterly fascinating, but also so contrary to this simple story of love and light. Maybe I’m an outlier, but to me Bluer Skies is one of the most BDSM scents I’ve ever encountered.

BLUER SKIES (WHENEVER YOU’RE AROUND) FRAGRANCE REVIEW

Bluer Skies starts off as ozone and aldehydes. The first sniff is like purple clouds at sunset, but they quickly part into a gray-green haze, obscuring everything else. It reminds me of wet clay. Not so much the kind you’d find in pottery studio, but the strata of dense clay I encounter within the ground, when I’m digging around in my Ohio garden. It’s pleasant and natural, although a little bit odd. I’ve never smelled anything quite like this in a perfume before. If you like things like ozone and petrichor in your perfume, consider this a “deep cut” that you will probably enjoy.

(This haziness is more prominent if you spray the fragrance over a wide area of skin, from a distance. This is the application method that I recommend. The first time I tried Bluer Skies, I plopped a fat puddle of liquid on my hand and ended up with a beak full of fatty-sour, “wet” sandalwood right from the start. Real sandalwood, like what you find in this fragrance, is worth waiting for. Dabbed on, I really didn’t like Bluer Skies much, but sprayed on it’s incredible).

After ten minutes the haze begins to crack, and floating up from the cracks is a salty jasmine. This is jasmine when the flowers are barely open, and it smells like the petals have been sprayed with salt water. This dried brine makes the florals smell brittle.

As the flowers open up, and the crusted salt flakes away, they unfold to reveal something more….. alkaline? It’s as though the calyx is made of copper, and the petals hold the faintest bit of bleach. The scent of patina forming — ketones and chlorine, sulfur, a bit of something suggestive of semen, all floating within the jasmine’s sweetness.

Beneath all this, there is a huge base of sandalwood. At this point, it’s still just a glimmer beneath the surface. Its massive presence can be felt before it comes into view; it makes the hairs stand up all over your body but you don’t yet know why. It reminds me of when I saw the albino alligators at the Newport Aquarium. Instead of water, I imagined them lurking in a sandalwood river, camouflaged by its milky whiteness. In this imaginary landscape, they would sneak up on you as the intoxicating smell lulls you into complacency.

At about 30 minutes, the sandalwood is still just a backdrop, but the main event is starting to take shape. This is the phase of highest tension, with exotic notes of coriander and galangal engaging each other in a pulsating dance of cooperation and opposition.

The coriander is cold, blue-green. It smells terpenic and floral, with a hint of blueberry.

The galangal is warm, red-yellow. It has a waxy cast. It’s camphoreous and peppery, like a mixture of cardamom and ginger.

Together, these two work together like the heads of a drum to create a resonant frequency. Striking the batter head causes a wave inside the drum that transfers energy to the resonant head. Although they never touch, they are coupled, and this coupling increases the vibrating mass, which sustains the energy as it passes back and forth between them.

The coriander and galangal seem to be coupled in the same way. Push and pull, give and take, warm and cold. They move together, but never merge. This tension and intrigue go on for hours, in and out, resisting and succumbing (almost), as they glide across the opalescent milk glass surface of the sandalwood below.

The interaction of the red-yellow galangal and the blue-green coriander, dependent but in opposition, is so prominent that I see it vividly. It reminds me of color doppler on an ultrasound, where movement toward the probe is seen as red, and movement away is seen as blue. Two forces moving in opposite directions, producing opposite colors. The faster the velocity, the brighter the shade.

There are moments of hot passion, and moments of cool aloofness. Tenderness, but with fingers resting on your throat. Silk ties and velvet blankets on fitted rubber sheets. Feathers and whips. Gentle stroking and rapacious clutching. Submission and domination, back and forth, as buttery sandalwood rises up in torrents and drips from your skin. Bluer Skies gives me much more than its innocent origin story implies. It is a profoundly sexy scent, to a degree that’s almost disturbing….. some days wearing it drives me to the point of distraction.

At the four hour mark, I smell mostly delicate and exotic sandalwood, a calming and contemplative scent, with just whispers of the struggle that came before. This is a welcome relief, because all the tension and sensuality that build and escalate in the fragrance’s heart sometimes take me to a point of near-exhaustion, in a very good way. The creamy sandalwood, lightly spiced and of impeccable quality, lasts for another three to four hours before melting entirely into my skin.

CONCLUSION

If Bluer Skies is happy, it’s happy in a moody way. The feelings of both desire and vulnerability that shine through this composition are what makes it so compelling. This willingness to be so exposed gives it an authenticity and rawness of emotion that belie its cheerful name. In this way, it’s so much more like the real, lived experience of adults navigating love and lust.

My experience with this scent has given me profound respect for perfumer Chris Rusak’s artistry and skill — he’s just launched last year so this is one of his first perfumes, and goddamn if he didn’t just go for it. To smell this is to see someone laid bare, putting it all out there for the whole world to see. It’s highly wearable, impactful art. It has a narrative full of emotion that unfolds as you wear it. (Also, if you’re not into stuff like that, I promise it smells really good too).

If you think too long about your own state of happiness, the thoughts become less about joy and more about impermanence. If you’re an empath, a survivor of abuse or violence, subject to bigotry and oppression, or suffering from mental illness, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Or maybe you just have a pessimistic streak. Maybe your experience has made you jaded. Being too happy for too long is terrifying. It makes you vulnerable, and dizzy. You’ll want to temper it, so you don’t have too far to fall.

Bluer Skies is a poignant reminder to me that for most of my life, my happiness has been tentative. Moments in the sun cast shadows. You can’t escape gravity. We are all slowly dying. Every good thing must come to an end. The higher the highs, the lower the lows.

And yes, it is possible to fetishize your sadness, and be turned on by the darkness in other people. For me, Bluer Skies is about embracing your deepest desires and emotions, and allowing yourself to be carried away by them. In that way, maybe the emotions that each wearer experiences will be whatever is already inside us?

I totally respect the artist’s vision and inspiration for this perfume, and I hold open the very real possibility that maybe I don’t “get” it at all. But if I had to choose a song to represent the scent, it wouldn’t be “Miracles.”

The song that it conjures for me is the pulsating eroticism and blunt dystopian feel of “Lie to Me,” by Depeche Mode. This song isn’t going to lead you to happily ever after, but it’s damn sexy in its edginess and ambiguity, and spilling over with desire, just like Bluer Skies (Whenever You’re Around).

BLUER SKIES (WHENEVER YOU’RE AROUND) DETAILS

This fragrance can easily be worn by both men and women. It’s sexy and sultry, but not in the tired and overdone “gourmand” way that’s so common these days. It has moderate projection and lasts for about 8 hours on my skin.

Perfumer’s listed notes are ozone, apple, jasmine sambac, coriander seed, galangal, natural Santalum album (sandalwood), patchouli, and musks. The perfume is created and manufactured by hand, in-house by the perfumer himself. (If you order from him directly, you’ll also be treated to fun and sustainable packaging which has delighted me each time I’ve ordered).

Bluer Skies (Whenever You’re Around) is presented as an EdP, and available in 30 mL and 50 mL bottles. For more information, see the perfumer’s website chrisrusak.com.

I purchased my bottle of Bluer Skies at full retail cost. This review is independent, unsponsored, and unsolicited.