The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Mr. Jacquel was released in 2017 as part of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's collaboration with Neil Gaiman, tied to his novel American Gods. The fragrance takes its name from the moment in the book when the jackal-headed Anubis, in his funeral-parlor guise as Mr. Jacquel, examines the body of a young girl on a slab. The scent was conceived to carry that same clinical gravity, the stillness of being measured and weighed, and the strange hush that settles over a room when the dead are present. The brand's own description pulls directly from Gaiman's text, evoking the feeling of being dissected, sliced, and tasted by something older than comfort. Elizabeth Moriarty Barrial, BPAL's co-founder, shaped the oil alongside Brian Constantine as part of the second wave of American Gods scents marking the collaboration's ten-year anniversary.
Most fragrances named after death lean gothic and ornamental, heavy on lilies, smoke, or cold stone. Mr. Jacquel goes the other direction. Hyssop, an herb long associated with purification rituals and burial rites across ancient traditions, does the heavy lifting. It's green, slightly bitter, and carries a clean sharpness that reads more like examination than mourning. The patchouli underneath isn't bohemian or sweet. It's the dry, rooty kind, the variety that feels like it grew in poor soil. Together with the spices and amber, the composition creates a space that feels sacred without being performative, quiet without being empty.
The evolution
On skin, Mr. Jacquel opens with a quick bite of hyssop, green and almost medicinal, the way herbs smell when you crush them between your fingers. Within fifteen minutes the spice notes warm and broaden, shifting the register from sharp to slow, like a room filling with sunlight through dusty windows. The amber arrives next, soft and resinous, wrapping around the hyssop rather than replacing it. What surprises is how the patchouli behaves: it doesn't announce itself. It darkens the edges of everything, pulling the composition toward earth and wood without ever taking center stage. By hour four, the spice has mellowed into something close to skin itself, warm and a little sweet, with the hyssop still faintly audible underneath. The oil format means it stays close to the body, a personal-radius scent that rewards leaning in. On fabric the next morning, you'll catch a trace of amber and dried herbs, a quiet remnant of the night before.
Cultural impact
Mr. Jacquel sits within BPAL's American Gods collaboration, a partnership that began in 2007 and represents one of the earliest cases of a contemporary novelist working directly with an indie perfume house. The 2017 release marked the ten-year anniversary of that collaboration, introducing a second wave of scents inspired by Gaiman's novel. For collectors, Mr. Jacquel occupies a specific niche: literary-themed, ritual-minded, and deeply seasonal. It appeals to wearers who treat fragrance as narrative, people drawn to dark herbal compositions over mainstream sweet or fresh profiles. As a discontinued oil, it carries the additional weight of scarcity that defines much of BPAL's archive, making it a sought-after entry for those building a Gaiman-themed collection.
