Byredo
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Adoxal crashes in with an almost aggressive greenish-woody sharpness, cutting and slightly acrid, like walking into a wood shop where someone's just switched on industrial machinery. There's an immediate synthetic quality that announces itself unapologetically—no soft introduction, no warming accord to ease you in.
The frankincense emerges as a resinous counterpoint, dry and slightly smoky, which complicates rather than softens the initial sharpness. A creamy-green honey note appears underneath, creating an odd tension between spice and sweetness that feels simultaneously botanical and artificial. The woody structure intensifies, becoming almost pencil-like in its precision.
Patchouli and amber settle into a cool, metallic base that never quite becomes warm or enveloping. What lingers is a subtle green-spice dryness, clover honey stripped of its usual cloying character, and that persistent woody-synthetic quality that defines the entire composition.
M/Mink arrives as a deliberately austere statement—a fragrance that rejects the comfort of easy wearability in favour of architectural abstraction. Jérôme Epinette has constructed something almost violently synthetic here, a deliberate embrace of the laboratory rather than nature, with Adoxal's sharp green-woody bite establishing an unsettling, slightly plastic quality that refuses to soften into familiarity. The frankincense in the heart doesn't offer the plush ecclesiastical warmth one might expect; instead, it takes on a brittle, resinous character that feels almost medicinal against the woody accords—think pencil shavings and incense smoke rather than temple incense.
What's particularly unusual is how the patchouli operates as a secondary protagonist rather than a base anchor. It emerges not as earthy depth but as something with a subtle spice, working in tandem with the clover honey to create an oddly creamy-green middle note that suggests neither confectionery nor soil, but something altogether stranger—perhaps the greenish tinge of honey before it's fully crystallised. The amber grounds everything without softening it; there's a cool, almost metallic undertone that prevents any genuine warmth from establishing itself.
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4.0/5 (105)