The surprise of this fall comes from Byredo and the very unusual creation recently launched in Paris. After 2 very bad previous launches, where the notion of perfumery + quality were washed out in a repulsive chemical freshness, M / MINK by Byredo took me like a storm. The perfume is highly original with the unexpected contrast between mineral ink, animalic notes and a strong aldehydic touch. It smells of many things but my first reaction was of a mythical furry beast flying in the metallic Antarctic breeze. It's honey and ice in a sublime contrast between the cold marine note of an aldehyde (adoxal) and the warm note of a spice. The perfume is suspended in a cloud of incense notes, floating above a forest of cedar and pine and above a river of amber (a molecule, not the sweet accord). You feel the resin, its warmth and its delicious sweetness flowing from the woody barks, but you also feel "the altitude", the air. M / MINK, with its combination of cedar, incense and an aldehyde, evokes the devastating note of a famous animalic base created many decades ago. It also evokes me several perfumes created last year where I felt this ozonic incense note worked with delicacy. But M / MINK gives us the full magnitude of this idea and the original note explodes. The mink note is under zoom and the fine hair becomes a forest. This tactile feeling recalls obviously the ink drawings where the brush creates the texture. The black spot is a condensed action while the brush stroke is recorded on paper through the density of the ink. Patchouli, soft leather and amber act like the shadow of a black drawing where no flower is growing. There is something that recalls a recent pine perfume from Lutens, but the accord is twisted in a very different direction - not the sweetness but the coldness of a "mineral" balm. The fragrance is worked with great strokes, the perfumer allows the overdose of several ingredients and has no fear in leaving "empty" spaces between the notes. This brutal approach of contrasts, where the dark honey animalic facet is the key note surrounded by a "breeze", is an excellent solution that perfectly fits the idea of a contemporary ink experiment. Ink + incense + fur + caviar - such a strange combination! For the first time in the history if Byredo, the idea is represented by the perfume. This woodiness, both strange and familiar, of a black forest, black fur or just the black ink brush, has something disturbing but beautiful. It ends with a soft ambery muskiness where the unusual cold incense reminds us that mysticism is not always synonym with sensuality.
With M / MINK by Byredo, Jérôme Epinette, author of other after less known and curious accords, is definitely the young star perfumer of Robertet.
( I wish the original notes were more worked at the end of the evaporation, there are still "unfinished" elements that I do not like at that stage, like the transparent woody musky facet).
With M / MINK by Byredo, Jérôme Epinette, author of other after less known and curious accords, is definitely the young star perfumer of Robertet.
( I wish the original notes were more worked at the end of the evaporation, there are still "unfinished" elements that I do not like at that stage, like the transparent woody musky facet).
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
