“Say your name three times,” Yosh Han tells me, settling back and closing her eyes.
“Shoshi Parks. Shoshi Parks. Shoshi Parks,” I repeat slowly like a mantra. Han lets the words wash over her then opens her eyes and digs through a bag of colored pens and pencils. She pulls out a blue-green and scribbles it across the corner of a chart with an androgynous black-and-white figure at its center.
“This is the color of your aura,” she says. “When I do a reading, it’s similar to me watching your movie. I see you in an English garden, a wild garden, not a manicured one. I see you moving beyond the guideposts of other people’s expectations to find your own path.”
Yosh Han has always had this gift, this clairvoyance—we all do, she says, but not everyone can access it so easily. It’s one of the overlapping circles in the Venn diagram of invisible arts that guide her path.
Han is considered one of the pioneers of West Coast perfumery, one who challenged its colonial, Eurocentric foundations. Over the years, her independent fragrance line Yosh (the Chinese character for which means fragrant) has been a staple at high-end shops like Barneys, Liberty London, Anthropologie, and SF’s Ministry of Scent.
“I opened the door of perfumery and held it open for other [POC and non-traditional perfumers] behind me,” she explains.
Captain Yosh Han on the way to Nuka Hiva, French Polynesia.(Courtesy of @captain_yosh_)
But in 2017, “an eat, pray, love moment, as well as teenage dreams of sailing into the sunset” set the 16-year Pacific Heights resident on a more nomadic trajectory. That year, she crossed the equator in a catamaran and, by sailor custom, made an offering to Poseidon, “marrying” the god of the sea with a “fake wedding band” she’d been wearing throughout her travels. Seven years later, she’s a USCG 25T Captain who’s traveled close to 20,000 nautical miles, never settling anywhere for long before she’s called back again.
“I have to be close to the water,” says the former scuba instructor and avid open-ocean swimmer. It’s probably not a coincidence she’s a Pisces.
Sailing, scent, and clairvoyance may seem like odd bedfellows but, says Han, “with the right tools, all have evidence of Divine Spirit.” They overlap in a multidimensional space in which she is more than just a perfumer, or a captain, or an aura reader, but all three at the same time: A “scent artist” who seeks to unleash, examine, and experience the essence of places, people, memories, emotions, and heritage.
Some of Han’s work is public, like a dinner at the Headlands Center for the Arts in which she evoked the scents of coastal Marin alongside James Beard Rising Star chef Erik Bruner-Yang, or the gallery installation Scents and Sonics of the Ocean in which she worked with scientists and sound artists to explore the unseen elements of Georgia’s Sapelo Island.
Han does an aura reading.(Courtesy of Yosh Han)
Some, like the aura readings she performs, are more personal.
“People have lots of emotions and memories associated with various scents but also energetically, people vibe with fragrances that resonate with them on a deeper level,” says Han. “I am able to tap into their spiritual space and see which scents may align with their highest self or which may support them in their growth and evolution.”
In one recent collaboration with jewelry designer and Fiat Lux owner Marie McCarthy, Han devised two fragrances inspired by classical mythology, Poseidon (salt, cypress, seaweed, and helichrysum) and Circe (labdanum, oud, amberwood, seaweed, and salt) for which McCarthy crafted unique, scent-holding pendants. For Circe, it's a 14-karat gold Third Eye vinaigrette pendant with a white or black diamond; Poseidon pairs with a rose quartz figa pendant that unscrews to hold drops of scent.
Though each project appears immensely different, they are all rooted in a deep understanding of how scent infiltrates and shapes our experiences, often without us being consciously aware of it. Even sailing would deflate without the briney smells of sea and salt.
“Take someone’s scent away and they need it desperately,” says Han. Capturing and harnessing fragrances, sailing, and clairvoyance are all spaces in which to recognize its deeper value.
On Tuesday, September 3rd, Han and McCarthy come to 7x7 Social Club for a special event, The Aura of Scent & Sea. Join us for aura readings with Han, oceanic sips and snacks, and shopping with Fiat Lux. Guests will also receive 10 percent off art and fashion purchases from 7x7 Social Club.
// Learn more about Yosh Han ateaudeyosh.com.
The third eye pendant locket (center) was designed by Marie McCarthy of Fiat Lux to showcase Yosh Han's scent, Circe.(Courtesy of @fiatluxsf)
