Amouage
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Black pepper crackles immediately across the top, sharp and almost peppery-green, cutting through creamy camellia with surgical precision. The jasmine arrives almost simultaneously, but it's a jasmine rendered strange by that peppery assault—floral but distinctly uncomfortable, like a beautiful thing made austere.
The composition settles into something genuinely unusual as beeswax emerges, waxy and slightly honeyed, alongside leather that develops a distinctly sour, slightly animalic character. Civet begins its slow creep forward, lending an intimate, skin-like warmth that makes the florals feel less about beauty and more about bodily presence. Gaiac wood adds a subtle woody-smoky dimension underneath.
The animalic notes utterly dominate now—civet and ambergris create a musky, almost feral second skin, whilst vetiver provides earthy grounding rather than freshness. The leather becomes more pronounced, taking on a worn, almost dusty quality. What remains is intensely intimate and decidedly uncompromising, holding close to skin rather than projecting outward.
Opus IX is a fragrance that refuses to whisper. Pierre Negrin has constructed something deliberately confrontational—a floral that doesn't apologise for its animalic underbelly. The jasmine arrives with camellia's creamy softness, but black pepper immediately destabilises any expectation of romance, introducing a sharp, almost aggressive quality that makes the florals feel dangerous rather than decorative.
What distinguishes this composition is the beeswax note's peculiar alchemy with civet and leather in the heart. Rather than creating a clean, honeyed sweetness, the beeswax acts as a bridge between the spicy florals above and the deeply animalic musks below—it's waxy, almost plasticky at times, lending an unsettling synthetic quality that transforms the leather from smooth to slightly rancid. Gaiac wood provides structure but feels almost secondary, a supporting player to the civet's feral energy and the leather's acrid character.
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3.5/5 (93)