Le Sel d'Issey Parfum 100ml

Saffron is what separates Issey Miyake Le Sel d'Issey Parfum 100ml from everything else wearing the Le Sel name, and it changes the character of the scent completely. Saffron is leathery, dry and faintly medicinal, with a warm hay like sweetness buried in it, and it is expensive stuff used sparingly. Put against seaweed it stops the salt reading as cold water and makes it read as warm skin after swimming. The seaweed itself is the mineral, briny, slightly green element the line is built on, and it is still the first thing you notice.

Underneath, oakmoss contributes a damp, bitter green depth, like the shaded side of a tree, and amber pools at the bottom as a soft resinous warmth. Four materials in all, which makes this the most concentrated statement in the range rather than the most complicated one.

In wear, the parfum strength shows. It is quieter in the first minutes than you expect and then it simply refuses to leave, sitting close to the skin for the better part of a day with the saffron and amber growing warmer as it goes. Two sprays will do. Quentin Bisch composed it. Cold weather and evenings suit it best, which is the reverse of the toilette version, and it reads as unisex with a slight lean towards men. At 100ml it is the size to buy if the rest of the line has already convinced you and you want its most serious expression.

The house is Japanese and arrived in perfumery from fashion. Miyake Design Studio opened in 1970, ISSEY MIYAKE INC. was incorporated in 1971 and the first shop in Tokyo opened in 1974, with the head office in Shibuya. Pleating and experimental construction made its reputation in clothes, and fragrance has been part of it since March 1992.