Josh from Libertine Fragrance talks Male Sensuality!
PLEASURE: Libertine Fragrance is a fragrance line that ignores typical gendered marketing conventions and focusses on the pure sensual pleasure that scents provides. All Libertine fragrances are UNISEX. The world often keeps people too busy to notice the simple beauty around them. Libertine Fragrance believe carrying a beautiful scent with you to enjoy on your body through your day is a perfect way to slow down to notice these subtle pleasures.
MUSE: Josh is an indie perfumer from Canada creating fragrances for human bodies. He meandered through a few different vocations before arriving at perfume making (forestry & design). Each new step gave him more permission to try more creative, exciting, passionate things. Perfume has stuck because it is endlessly complex and can be incredibly beautiful.
1. So much information at the moment about women tapping into their pleasure. Do you feel it is important for men to tap into their pleasure as well? What kind of role does pleasure play in your life?
While I think the need for women to be tapping into their pleasure is more immediate as there has always been more attempts to regulate women's pleasure. I think men's pleasure is incredibly important. Looking at the info out there about the amount of sex that finishes in orgasm for men and women it is pretty clear that men are getting off (and maybe not trying hard enough) but I think the traditional scope of masculinity is very narrow and men not exploring outside of that because of a fear of vulnerability is part of the reason for bad sex in the first place.
Being open to slow, communicative, pleasure based intimacy doesn't make you less of a man, neither does having your partner put something in your butt, or letting her hold you down and take control.
2. Do you have any morning rituals which set the mood for the rest of your day?
3. What is the best part of your job?
The best part of my job is receiving a shipment of new ingredients and getting to open them and inhale new smells from all over the world. Perfume uses some weird stuff that is terrible on it's own but really makes a blend shine!
4. What is sensuality for you and how (if you do) do you embody it?
After doing a lot of meditating and reading about mindfulness/ presence the idea of sensual engagement is the only way that I've found that has stuck for being in the present. Everything else has felt a little too esoteric for me. Yoga is great and all but I can't get into the more hippy-ish stuff that can go along with it.
Enjoying my sensuality means being present and noticing what is happening around me and what I am enjoying in each moment. Sensual pleasure can be found everywhere, it just takes being slow and paying attention to yourself.
5. Best pleasure investment of or under 100 USD?
A roll-on of Sex & Jasmine perfume... that is mostly a joke (mostly). For me scent/ skin care products are my thing so a fancy bottle of cream or a really interesting scent makes me really happy.
6. A quote that is currently speaking to your heart?
Less to the heart than other places but I am reading Diane Ackerman's Natural History of the Senses and I loved her introduction on sex.
" Like two paramecia, we engulf one another. We play at devouring each other, at digesting each other. We nurse on each other, drink each others fluids, actually get under each other's skin"
7. When you are not creating your products, what are you doing in your daily life?
I absolutely love cooking. Some of the same skills are required as that of perfume and having a subtle palate for food is similar to that of a scent. I just loose all sense of time when I am cutting and prepping things and trying to figure out timing and flavours. That and cooking is always best when it is a meal for other people which is perfect since perfume is more solitary.
I just want to taste and touch and smell my way though the world.
8. How do you procrastinate?
I'll give you three guesses...
You can find Josh on his instagram at @libertinefragrance. All his creations are sold in a number of retail locations in North America and online with worldwide shipping.
