Givenchy
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The first spray unleashes a shock of aldehydes cutting through mandarin and neroli, simultaneously bright and metallic, before that insistent galbanum arrives like someone's opened a window in a perfume organ. Bergamot and Brazilian rosewood try to soften the assault, but the overall effect is deliberately disorientating—green, white-floral, and vaguely aggressive.
The florals finally bloom into focus, but they're discordant—tuberose's creamy indole wrestling with narcissus's powdery, almost soapy undertones, whilst jasmine adds weight and honey lends a sticky sweetness that borders on cloying. Civet and castoreum begin surfacing beneath, adding an animalic shadow and the faint scent of skin musk, making the composition feel suddenly intimate and bodily.
The fragrance collapses inward into a warm, spiced base where clove and patchouli anchor everything, whilst oakmoss and vetiver provide earthy, almost herbal resistance to the amber's sweet embrace. Sandalwood and precious woods emerge softly, the musk deepens, and what remains is a skin scent—barely detectable beyond an inch, but insistently, undeniably present.
Ysatis arrives as a fracture of competing impulses—a fragrance caught between restraint and excess, caught between its era and something timeless. Dominique Ropion has constructed something genuinely unsettling here, which is precisely why it matters. The opening throbs with aldehydic intensity and candied citrus (that mandarin-coconut pairing is unexpectedly creamy, almost gourmand), but this brightness is immediately undercut by a galbanum so green it borders on acrid—like crushed iris root and cut grass layered beneath honeyed orange blossom. There's a tension that never fully resolves.
The heart is where Ysatis becomes truly baroque. Narcissus and tuberose clash with jasmine in a way that feels less harmonious than genuinely conflicted—the narcissus brings an almost nauseating powder and paperiness, whilst the tuberose's indolic richness strains against it. Honeyed florals meet the first whispers of civet and castoreum, animalic notes that smell faintly of damp fur and leather.
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4.0/5 (132)