The olfactive story of Asphalt Rainbow, like Christopher Street’s, begins with its fragrance brief: the roadmap for crafting the final scent. The first rough sketches date back to the fall of 2012, when I was consumed by documenting daily life and street art in the West Village. One afternoon at the old Badlands building crystallized the concept: as the city’s anti-graffiti squad descended, hosing and buffing away the walls, a momentary explosion of color remained. Magentas, greens, rusts, torn paste-ups, urban detritus… a fleeting rainbow in the grit. That unintentional moment of beauty stuck with me, forming the seed for the fragrance.

After Christopher Street launched, I returned to Badlands with fresh eyes. Over ten hours, I moved back and forth across the walls, capturing every swash of aerosol, ink, sticker, and texture. I observed artists at work and replayed that fleeting color explosion in my mind. Every detail, every surface, every olfactive impression was examined meticulously, almost forensically. This attention to detail became the heart of Asphalt Rainbow: a scent grounded in observation, materials, and the ephemeral existence of street art.

Asphalt Rainbow asks: what happens when a graffiti artist’s spray cans are replaced with a perfumer’s organ of ingredients? Borrowing techniques from street artists (aerosol, wheatpaste, ink, stickers…), the fragrance is built wall by wall, layer by layer. Notes are twisted, materials disrupted, and textures amplified. The rose, central to the composition, is fractured, scattered, and reassembled across the urban olfactive landscape. The process mirrors the forensic eye employed to translate fleeting street art into scent.

Street art distorts perception, transforms spaces, and fades with time. Asphalt Rainbow mirrors this lifecycle. The rose at its core is dissected. Its petals are splayed and pressed into an urban landscape, then fading, returning, and twisting through the fragrance’s evolution. Leaves brush asphalt, thorns crack through invisible streets, while the floral heart dances unpredictably, echoing the impermanent beauty of graffiti and street tags. Each stage distorts, transforms, and eventually yields to background, like a weathering mural on a city wall.

The fragrance is built upon the skeletal structure of a deconstructed rose accord. Fragments of the flower mingle with urban-inspired elements (hints of wood, asphalt, subtle sulfurs, and splashes of olfactive paint) creating the effect of color distortion. Pieces of the rose echo in and out as the scent unfolds, a reflection of the unpredictable, ephemeral nature of street art.

Petals shattered.
Paint sprayed.
Skin as canvas.

To further connect the visual and textural components of street art to Asphalt Rainbow, a series of limited edition scratch-and-sniff stickers were designed by CM Founder Douglas Bender. Each 4x4 sticker, embedded with Asphalt Rainbow fragrance, captures words, images, and textures that inspired the project. Slap them anywhere and the street comes to life under your nose.

Asphalt Rainbow. A rose undone.