Blackcurrant is not a note I usually go for in perfumery. I once had the extrait of Cassisier by L’Occitane and liked my brother’s Roger & Gallet Cassis Frenesie – he is obsessed with the note- but I don’t usually wear it myself. I like, but don’t love it in fruit jams, and avoid cocktails with creme de cassis, so I am probably not the ideal candidate for Byredo’s new Mixed Emotions even if paradoxically I think it is possibly my favourite of their entire collection.
You do have to like blackcurrant if you are to enjoy this scent. The beginning, especially, is a highly unusual mentholated cassis note that can’t help but make you think of cough sweets ( or throat lozenges); I remember at school at the bus stop, hands in pockets on frosty winter mornings, any kid who had a stuffed up nose or a cold would pass around their packet of Tunes to share and while away a few minutes, waiting, decongesting the sinuses with head-clearing menthol vapors flavoured with synthetic raspberry or blackcurrant. The whole upper deck would smell of it.
Immediately with Mixed Emotions, beside the blackcurrant , you are also met with warm, emotively aromatic support from both South American mate and Ceylon tea, made smokier still ( but not to the usual Byredo levels of intensity ) by deft touches of birch leaf, violet, and and papyrus. The scent tugs at you in a nostalgic way and I find it quite an original composition; definitely melancholic and very ‘moody’ with no schmaltz or sweetness (the art film made to promote the perfume, atmospheric and quite self-serious, will possibly be seen as pretentious and indulgent by some; a series of young Londoners variously discussing their own identity issues and life philosophies while dancing around a stately home set in the misty English countryside: D and I found it rather dreamy and restful one afternoon); an ‘epicene’, or ungendered, scent according to Byredo that is a match for these difficult, emotionally testing times. In its holistic whole, I like it ; D, another blackcurrant lover, does not, attesting to the aptness of its perfect, if slightly self-consciously awkward name.
I’m glad to hear that finally Byredo created something likable. Although I do own a few Byredos, I am not a fan of the House. Most of the scents are very ordinary but very expensive. They did a recent tobacco fragrance that sounded interesting, but I never got around to trying it.
I haven’t smelled that one yet either – it wasn’t at the Byredo shop in Yokohama.
This is strange ; definitely polarizing, but more tender, less harsh and direct than some of their other offerings.
Are you a blackcurrant woman ?
This was dreadful on me. It smelled like peach on the paper strip, so I tested it on skin and got a huge camphoraceous blast. Honestly I never smelled black currant at any point, and I love black currant, both in perfume and preserves. In the far drydown I did smell the peach but this one is a hard pass for me.
The Tobacco Mandarin was wonderful on me however and I ended up buying it.
I am intrigued. Not too sweet ?
As for Emotions, I wouldn’t wear it :there is something quite odd about it. But as it wore on, on my skin the woody aromatic tea aspect definitely had something..
Smelling it now I can see the blackcurrant / peach connection ; it certainly isn’t like the fresh tart fruit, which is probably where I made the lozenge connection
No, I didn’t find it sweet, just fruity. The drydown was fine but I wouldn’t wear it because the first hour or so is so dire.
The dry down is kind of foxy I agree in a dry and splintery way ; I also personally couldn’t take the opening. There is something sickening about it.
Mixed Emotions, given that Duncan likes blackcurrant but not this fragrance. sounds like something I might not like all that much either. I like many mint effects, but mentholated isn’t one of them. I think of Vicks VapoRub. But I (as usual with your positive reviews) adore the way you describe it and found myself falling in love with it as I was reading. And the notes themselves (mentholation notwithstanding) sound as though they’d be gorgeous together.
I think we talked about Byredo not too long ago. I’ve never warmed to the line myself, for skin. I like the scents as room scents; their candles are very good. I am intrigued, though.
I watched the whole YouTube video. I loved parts of it. The music, the dancing, the settings, the light, the costumes, the editing. YES. Um, the musings, though. I’m not too sure about those.
And I kept distracting myself by thinking, “Man, these people are definitely NOT cool with the name Gypsy Water.”
Some of their names are definitely a tad gauche.
Like the film, to me this is more for autumn than spring. I am pretty sure you would enjoy smelling glimpses of it on another person if not yourself.
I can totally get how their candles might be more appealing than the skin perfumes as they already kind of smell like room fragrances. Which ones have you tried ? D is a candle hater so we never have them but I enjoy sniffing them anyway.
I like the kind of smoky ones like Bibliotheque, Bohemia, Burning Rose and Tree House. I didn’t know D was a candle hater. I didn’t know there was such a thing! Ric impressed me when I met him and went to his cottage for the first time. He had scented candles. Good ones. (I know! My jaw dropped. Shows just how much I had to learn.) Not bad, for a guy who works chainsaw for a living.
But how do you cope? Incense is good, but there’s nothing like a great candle. Somehow, the scent translates especially well when it’s coming from hot wax or soy.
I understand that difference: between ambient scent and scent you actively sniff from your wrist or smell on yourself if you put on lots. Sometimes I wish I could smell myself from afar like that, just removed enough to make a difference.
I’ve only just heard of this brand. Your comment is exactly what my first thought was. Dreadful name and “Mojave Ghost” is just as bad. They’re both deeply patronising and trivialising.
That could apply to a million perfume names. Byredo is not so bad in the scheme of things
I have yet to find a Byredo fragrance I like, although the tobacco one filomena mentioned above might be nice. I am always searching for a tobacco leaf scent that might smell similar to a Voluspa candle I once owned, it was called Warm Perique Tabac. The candle is long discontinued now, but the aroma was intoxicating. I detest the backcurrant note in almost all fragrances where it is a focal point, same goes for mint, so I would more than likely not enjoy MIxed Emotions. You do make it sound desirable though.
I think you would HATE it!
I know what you mean about tobacco as a perfume note. I also like it, but it is almost always used too heavy handedly or is too sweet.
Exactly! They always turn it up to nuclear and layer on the gourmand notes.