I love the idea of contrast in a perfume – in fact in many things – when it’s done well the result can be really memorable. The right humour in a sad moment is capable of helping, the cold plunge after the sauna is unbelievably exhilarating, and a touch of lightness in a male fragrance can give you a whole new look at a very conservative field…..

For this project I didn’t want to create something different just for the sake of being different but I did want to make sure I used influences from all areas of perfumery and didn’t restrict my work to a few well trodden paths. That’s particularly important when you are creating fragrances for men to use which is an area with far less innovation than the female fragrance world.

At the top of the fragrance I used white pepper oil which has been extracted with CO2 to give it a fuller effect along with traces of other spices mixed with davana oil (which adds a vibrant alcohol note). I then used juniper berries from Grasse and green mandarin from Sicily to round out the spice with the lighter citrus notes.

I wanted the strength of woods to be an important factor but I also wanted to work the idea of marine freshness within that structure. I used Haitian vetiver, guicawood from Guatamala, American cedar wood and Indonesian patchouli to give a strong, distinctive woody character. Within those notes I created an aquatic accord of calone and lavender from Barreme in France. This gives a completely new twist to the transparent freshness, which has become so popular over the last decade, with the classic herbality that lavender always delivers.

One of the most exciting ingredients in the mix is the patchouli, which although originally an Indonesian patchouli has been subsequently aged and redistilled in France. The treatment makes a surprisingly large difference to the power and fullness of the patchouli but it’s not an ingredient that is widely used because it is very expensive. Another interesting ingredient is olibanum, the biblical frankincense, from Somalia, it has a beautiful deep woody orange aroma which gives real power.

This is a relatively complex fragrance with around 60 ingredients and when you count the ingredients within the bases there are a lot more still but it’s not there to impress with its complexity – it is there to impress with its character. It mixes some traditionally masculine elements with a distinctive light modern freshness and I feel that the two themes have merged in an extremely distinctive and memorable way.