On Western Australia’s rugged Kimberley Coast, famed for its untouched beauty where rugged red-hued ranges and dramatic sandstone escarpments seemingly spill in swirls of pastel pink into the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean, Broome is a sun kissed resort town set against the 22km-long white silica sands of Cable Beach.
Beneath a blazing sun and always azure sky, Broome is cosmopolitan, the mood always relaxed. The air is thick with humidity one minute, the rich perfume of tropical fruits and frangipani the next, where the breeze is soft and languorous, charged with the seductive sound of the sea and relaxed strum of buskers’ guitars. A corner of abundance in an otherwise arid expanse of desert, the red dirt landscape is lush with native boab trees, pandanus palms, and desert peach shrubs, where sweeping rivers flow into the rich waters of Roebuck Bay and the Indian Ocean – home to majestic Whale Sharks and lustrous Broome pearls.
In Broome where natural phenomena abound, the sun sets longer. Here, the golden hour lasts for what seems an eternity as the sun begins its descent over the pristine sands of Cable Beach – watched cocktail-in-hand by locals and tourists alike – falling ever lower in the western sky, eventually dipping as it does into the Indian Ocean. This is sunset hour.
This is the inspiration for the latest release from Goldfield & Banks, the aptly named Sunset Hour.
For Sunset Hour, Goldfield & Banks provides the following notes list:
mandarin, desert peach/quandong (more on this below), raspberry, jasmin sambac, ginger, pink pepper, sandalwood, cashmere woods, benzoin
Experience on my skin though suggests the composition wears more akin to this:
quandong accord, mandarin, pear, raspberry, peach, mango, jasmin sambac, ginger, pink pepper, coconut, sandalwood, musk, benzoin, vanilla, caramel accord, cashmere woods
An ode to the dramatic, contrasting landscapes of Australia, each of Goldfield & Banks’ Australian-made luxury fragrances has at its heart a rare native essence, a material rarely known outside of Australia, much less used in modern perfumery. In Sunset Hour, that rare native material is the quandong, Santalum acuminatum, or desert peach, which thrives in Broome’s harsh inland wilderness of craggy ranges and semi-arid desert.
A fruiting shrub in the sandalwood family producing small cup shaped flowers with a perfume that is tart, borderline salty with distinct peach and rhubarb nuances, the quandong produces fruit too which are tart to taste with an aroma displaying complex savoury and fermented citrus fruit characteristics. With Sunset Hour, Goldfield & Banks is the first perfume house to explore the quandong as an olfactory material and to add this complex native botanical to its luxury perfume collection.
Fun and frivolous from the onset, Sunset Hour opens with crisp pear, mandarin and a quandong accord that does exceptionally well with tart raspberry and peach to replicate the sweet, salt crusted scent of the desert peach blossom. Carrying through the heart, jasmine’s rich white floralcy with green mango, ginger and coconut cream enhance the tropical exoticism of the desert peach as pink pepper lends sharpness to this central ingredient’s tartness. All the while, Australian sandalwood, itself a close relative of the quandong, provides a spiced-green-woodsy springboard for the fruity decadence of the coconut and desert peach accord which carry through the plush musk-caramel-vanilla base.
A spirited fruity-floral-woody perfume with heady tropical flourishes contrasting luxuriously tactile woods and golden-hued gourmand notes, Goldfield & Banks presents with Sunset Hour an olfactory interpretation of Broome’s famed pastel hued sunsets. A Western Australian myself, one who has spent many a long hot summers’ evening revelling in the beauty and atmosphere of Broome’s famed sunsets, I can say with confidence that Sunset Hour perfectly encapsulates its inspiration, and begs as it does to be worn in the heat of summer under shade of a wide-brimmed straw hat.
Year of Release: 2021
Creative Direction: Dimitri Weber
Perfumer: Honorine Blanc
Alternatives: Tom Ford Soleil Blanc, Xerjoff Cruz del Sur II
Available: www.goldfieldandbanks.com and Selfridges (exclusive international stockist) for $229, 100ml