The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Solar Essay arrived in 2023 as part of And Other Stories' growing perfume oil collection, a travel-friendly roll-on format. The brand commissioned Jérôme Epinette to compose it, working from a brief that leans heavily on tiare flower and coconut, two materials that together sketch a specific latitude: humid, bright, unhurried. And Other Stories treats fragrance as a parallel wardrobe, and Solar Essay reads like a linen set translated into scent, loose and sun-faded. The composition opens with a confident citrus-coconut lift, then settles into something creamier and more floral, before pulling back toward wood and warm resin. There's no rush here.
What's interesting here is the tightrope between sunscreen associations and something more floral. Epinette stacks coconut and lemon at the top, a combination that immediately signals beach, and then grounds it with tiare flower and mimosa in the heart. Tiare carries a gardenia-adjacent creaminess without tipping into full tropical. Mimosa adds a powdery yellow pollen note, almost like sunlight caught in fabric. The base of tonka bean and cedarwood quietly pulls the composition back to earth, giving it a subtle warmth that lasts beyond the opening brightness.
The evolution
On skin, Solar Essay opens with coconut and lemon bright enough to register immediately, the kind of citrus lift that feels carbonated for the first few minutes. Within ten to fifteen minutes the mimosa and tiare step forward, turning the scent noticeably creamier and a touch powdery, less sunscreen, more wildflower. Cyclamen hides in this middle stretch, giving it a green-floral flicker that keeps the creaminess from going heavy. Over the next stretch of wear the tonka bean and cedarwood arrive, slowly pulling the coconut into something drier and warmer. What's notable is how the cedar never dominates. It hums underneath. The drydown settles into a soft, close skin scent where tonka and the ghost of coconut linger longest, a quiet finish that feels less like a fragrance ending and more like a memory forming.
Cultural impact
Solar Essay reads as a sun-soaked, escapist fragrance, the kind built around coconut and lemon as lead materials rather than moodier bases. Its pairing nods to tropical gourmand traditions while keeping the profile airy rather than heavy, leaning into brightness and accessibility instead of dense resin or smoke. The release from And Other Stories, a brand already known for its lifestyle storytelling, treats fragrance as another chapter in a curated world, where scent fits alongside a wardrobe, a holiday, or a particular kind of summer afternoon.
