Review by anomie et ivoire
I wore this exclusively for years before becoming interested in perfume, and in the room spray form of all things, though maybe fitting for a way to wear a home for transient dead bodies on a living one? Now I have this in the oil and am much impressed by the better longevity, depth, richness of Demeter's oils. The white florals are pulled up by their roots, trailing dirt, maybe worms, then "shade(d) and shove(d) and render(ed) clean" by arrangements, green sponge wreathes and formaldehyde. Certainly classically gothic but not morbid, Funeral Home is to me a vast improvement on the rooty dankness reputation of Iris Silver Mist, though the two are not much alike. The mood of vegetal tuber solemnity and masses of clean dirt unearthed are similar, but Funeral Home marries subliminal spices to surface ceremony and is so strikingly heavy-light as any joke about death. Strange, but for a death-humor-or-not contemplating fragrance, this smells very much alive. Gucci Envy's calmer partner in florist shop banality made flesh-touching novelty. "What do the dead want with fake flowers that never die, how cruelly optimistic and too late" I wrote in a graveyard as a scrappy peri-gothic kid. Then a poem titled, yeah eyeroll, 'a most septic mausoleum,' well, Funeral Home is that, and it is the living breathing flower that suggests death so keenly with the vulnerability and totality of its vital heights. This will always be a favorite and will--for whatever forever is--forever be home.
