Ecka Mordecai

United Kingdom aequill

Soundscape-led perfumery that tries to bottle a passing feeling rather than a picture: green tea and warm rain, a mimosa tree full of birdsong, a strong and silent type. Compositions lean on natural essential oils over aroma molecules and are written unisex.

About

Ecka Mordecai is a London-based British artist whose work moves between sound, performance and scent. She is the composer behind Sound 01, Sound 02 and Sound 03, the three unisex perfumes she made for aequill in 2022 while the house's artist in residence.

Her route into perfume came through music. She began with Elizabethan and Renaissance instruments and classical cello, then attended art schools in Brighton and London, specialising in sound and performance art. She has performed since 2010 and released two solo albums, Critique + Prosper in 2020 and Promise & Illusion in 2022. In early 2020 she met aequill's founder as a studio neighbour, and the house's own account says she was trained in fragrance there and went on to become its in-house perfumer.

The Sound range was composed around deep listening. Her starting point was the sounds of East London: rain, steam, birdsong, laughter and silence. Each scent holds one remembered moment. Sound 01 is a warm-rain accord of green mandarin, orange blossom, honeysuckle, musk and amber. Sound 02 is mimosa, sweet citrus and jasmine. Sound 03 is rosewood, orange blossom, myrrh, bergamot and musk. The house says all three use nine parts essential oil to one part aroma molecule, and that the finished formulas were refined with its founder and an olfactory chemist.

Away from perfume she works as a sound technician and educator in London, scores film and plays with other artists in the improvised and experimental music scene. Her scents read as the work of a composer: each one is built to capture a feeling that passes quickly, in the way a sound does.