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| Photo by Vanja Kovac |
Some perfumers express "greenness" by constructing a pyramid that is representative of green things, like moss, grass, green herbs, bitter pine. Other perfumers, like Jérôme Epinette, approach it from a more peripheral angle, and opt to incorporate notes that coalesce into a color-coded experience that isn't necessarily found in nature.
La Tulipe is an example of the latter approach. It starts with a studiedly muted citrus accord, more lemongrass than lemon, and rapidly morphs into the gauzy-green smell of dewey stems wrapped up in a grocery store fridge. There's a little rosy sweetness in back, the fantasy concept of what a tulip might smell of, if it had a smell, or what its chilled niche actually smells of instead. It is paradoxically an unmistakable yet nondescript headspace, a bit powdery and cold, green and plant-like, and only lightly touched by a romantic bouquet aura. It doesn't change much, doesn't really move over the course of eight hours, but it doesn't need to; it smells great. Byredo focused their brief on a specific thing that we all know to be true, but have never encountered outside of a florist shop.
This is the sort of direct beauty that I wish I could find everywhere, but alas, not since Jacomo's original Silences have I smelled something as starkly green as La Tulipe is. Silences is heavier, with foggy layers of oak moss, denser florals, and intense orris, while Byredo's scent dispenses with the extra atmosphere, and just goes au naturale. Yes!