Issey Miyake
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Aniseed and coriander burst forward with startling clarity, their peppery sweetness immediately challenged by coconut's creamy undertone and mahogany's woody tang—a discordant opening that refuses to present as conventionally welcoming.
As the spice settles into the background, milk and caramel emerge like a cooling cream spreading across your skin, allowing jasmine and rose to finally breathe without being overwhelmed, whilst the woody base of cedar and gaïac wood solidifies the composition's architecture beneath the florals' gentle powderiness.
The fragrance distils itself to pure wood and amber—sandalwood and gaïac create a dry, almost cedar-like finish, with musk and vanilla adding a skin-scent warmth rather than projection, leaving behind something quietly tenacious and almost invisible but distinctly present.
Le Feu d'Issey burns with a peculiar restlessness—not the aggressive flare of a traditional oriental, but rather the crackling intensity of spices meeting warm, creamy woods. Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud has constructed something genuinely disorienting here: aniseed and coriander ignite immediately, their liquorice-tinged heat colliding with coconut's waxy sweetness and an unexpected mahogany that reads almost leathery. This is where the fragrance reveals its cleverness—the spice accord never settles into comfort; instead, it creates friction against a heart that's simultaneously creamy and floral.
The milk and caramel notes don't arrive as gourmand indulgence in the modern sense. Rather, they function as a cooling agent, tempering the aniseed's licorice burn whilst the jasmine and rose add a powdery, almost soapy texture that prevents the composition from becoming cloying. There's something almost herbal about how these florals interact with the spice—less romance, more pharmaceutical warmth. The mahogany deepens this effect, grounding everything in wood rather than allowing it to float in the floral-amber clouds typical of 1990s unisex fragrances.
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3.8/5 (418)