Mendittorosa Sogno Reale: A Dream So Real We Can Smell It

by: Miguel Matos

Stefania Squeglia of Mendittorosa

“The perfume came to me in a dream in almost finished form. I woke up and knew I had to make this perfume—the dream was coming through. Warm sun-filled lemon, animal terroir of leather and the mysterious urchin—king of the unknown depths of the ocean and our mind. A trilogy of sun, earth and sea blends together.”—Stefania Squeglia, founder and owner of Mendittorosa.

Dreams are a fountain of art material, if we take them and work with what they bring to our world. Since the times of the famous painter Hieronymus Bosch we can see depictions of dreams in paintings and later with the Surrealists, all visual arts adopted dreams as sources of inspiration. However, not all artists use the influence of dreams. For example, as much as David Lynch's work seems dreamy and absurd at times, he does not get his ideas from dreams. “I love the logic of dreams; I like how they function,” he says in his book Catching the Big Fish. “However, I get more ideas from music or just from walking.” In perfumery, there is one particular artist who just presented the olfactory result of a dream with Mendittorosa's Sogno Reale.

But before I present you the conversation I had with Stefania Squeglia, founder ofMendittorosa, in Milan, at the Esxence expo last week, let me just delve a bit into the subject of the importance of dreams and the relation between them and the waking dimension.

An artist dreams also while s/he is awake. In those dreams that s/he materializes in art, s/he knows how to transform his or her individual experience in something that s/he can share with others. By doing this, and adding to it the necessary elements to materialize his ghosts, s/he can also provide an aesthetic experience, a source or pleasure. According to Sigmund Freud, “when he manages to do this, he gives others a way of getting relief and comfort in the sources of pleasure, which had became inaccessible, from the subconscious itself.” Freud defended the theory that dreams have a meaning and it was possible to interpret them. In ancient times, dreams were respected as something that could tell us something about the future, but modern science neglects dreams, considering them as superstition. However, we can also use them to understand our world, as part of our nocturnal inner life that mixes with our unsolved interests from the waking life. The unconscious and instinctive impulse within a dream is of great value for our self-knowledge. The interpretation of a dream can unveil a repressed desire or it can also be an extension of the daily mental activity representing a warning, a sign, a reflection or a desire. Freud also believed that dreams could be like impulses to return to the mother's womb.

On the other hand, Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler considered dreams as something abstract that derived from our conscious thoughts and could serve as warnings or symbols of a personal tendency. The use of it would depend of whether we remember them or not. “What goes on during our sleep, in our mind, and takes on strange forms, is nothing more than a bridge that connects the previous day to the next ... It's just a statement related to life which has the dream as basis,” says Adler in his book Understanding Human Nature. I can also recall Carl Jung's theories when he considered dreams as something natural and pure. Truth liberated from all that is fake, and therefore they can reveal the real essence of the human being.

Portuguese philosopher Maria João Ceitil defended that dreams should play a major role in our lives and should be integrated in art and philosophy. According to her, we should value our ability to dream. For her, dreams are intimate to our acrchaic, pure and primitive sensibility. It is something from the unconscious and hence free from censorship. She questioned our certainties while we are awake. Are they more valuable than the ones we have when we are dreaming? However, the things we are sure of when we dream are immediately destroyed as soon as we wake up. Shouldn't we do it differently? Shouldn't we use dreams more efficiently? “The certainties of a dream don't last, they don't linger, they fade away as we wake up. The certainties of the dream don't offer us guarantees (…) they are not shelters,” says the author in the book Pôr o Corpo a Pensar ("Let Your Body Think"). We were told not to love illusions. We were told that dreams are false, untrue, illusions, lies. Is that the reason why we are so detached from our oniric life?

“In the oniric space there are no limits or frontiers: anything can happen. It's a space of pure and full subjectivity. In a no less surprising way, the opposites don't exclude themselves, in fact opposites coexist,” explains Maria João Ceitil. And despite this, it doesn't mean that we are entering  a chaotic, meaningless universe. “Because the oniric space has no frontiers, limits, it resembles, in a way, the space of smell, which has also no borders or frontiers. There is something that connects smell and dream, even though unavoidable differences subsist. In dreams there is a space, smell is not a spatial reality: smell surrounds space.”

What are the dangers of mixing real things with imaginary ones? What effects can a dream cause in real life? Ceitil states that the effects of magic reality, of the magic worlds, depend also on us having or not magical worlds inside and on the echos and ressonances they provoke inside us. Do we feel fear from a dream? Do we feel a warning? Do we feel enchanted or happy after a dream? If so, the dream has its real effect in life and we can decide to work from that. In that case shouldn't we use it in art—and scent? What is the smell of a dream?

Stefania Squeglia is the owner of Italian perfume line Mendittorosa - Odori d'Anima (in English, "smell of the soul") and she is a beautiful woman who believes in the power of dreams. This is such a strong conviction that she has just launched a perfume (during the days at Esxence expo) based on a dream she had—Sogno Reale. Mendittorosa is a very recent line, launched only two years ago. This brand is considered niche, but Stefania believes it is more than that. “It's pure passion and it's about very uncompromising choices. It's a continuous research of a way of expression, very close to art,” she says. “I've made some very radical choices, almost in the border of craziness, from the marketing point of view. I don't hesitate to undergo a big production cost in order to obtain the vision I have in my mind. I use my personal life as inspiration and my perfumes are a way to share with people the beautiful experiences I have in my life. In fact I chose this expression—Odori d'Anima—because I think that perfume is for the body but smell is for the soul and I like this difference.”

Mendittorosa's latest creation, Sogno Reale, comes from a dream Stefania had. “I dreamed about this smell. One night I dreamed about the smell of sea urchin, animal skin and lemon. The morning after, I started to write down the dream as I usually do. It's like a memento—don't forget your dreams. This time, instead of writing, I called my lab in Paris and I asked Amélie Bourgeois to help me realize this dream. For me, if someone could translate my dream this means that I've made the dream come true. So, after one year I got it. Then I decided to create this cap that is manufactured from resin after a real sea urchin. I think that it is like a crown.” The bottle also comes with a bronze talisman attached to it. “For me, this bottle symbolizes the king of unconsciousness and I wanted to give it this metal shield to protect it. On this shield I put a mandala symbol in order to protect our dream life. So this is my baby screaming to everybody 'please don't lose the connection with your dreams.' Our dreams are powerful but also very fragile and we can lose them. Our dreams are real, we cannot pretend they don't exist. It's just another dimension. I invite you to write down your dreams because when you do that, your dreams are talking to you.”

Sogno Reale
lemon, bergamot, marine accord, tuberose, patchouli, vulcan olibanum, hyraceum, rum, sandalwood, styrax, amber wood.

The opening of Sogno Reale is citrusy with lemon and bergamot. Amélie Bourgeoiswanted to work the seaside theme, but she was very light in order to avoid the danger to reach a salty fragrance which wasn't in Stefania's concept. Amélie used tuberose and patchouli to give the fragrance the depth of dreams and unconsciousness. So she used a lot of dark elements like olibanum and African stone. “I always work with perfumers Amélie Bourgeois and Anne-Sophie Behaghel. I never change. For me this is a spiritual wedding because they are always able to translate my visions,” says Stefania.

Mendittorosa's creations can be found at Jovoy in Paris, Harvey Nichols in Dubai, Niche in Berlin, Emporium in Baku, Gum in Moscow and Fenwick Bond Street in London. For more information visit mendittorosa.com

Images from the event: Miguel Matos