Issey Miyake
Issey Miyake
255 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The saffron hits like a slap of golden resin, immediately joined by cinnamon's hot-sweet embrace and the green-woody bite of coriander seed. Nutmeg adds a creamy warmth that prevents the opening from becoming shrill, though there's an almost medicinal intensity in those first few minutes—turmeric-stained fingers and freshly ground spices in a marble mortar.
As the spice storm settles, the leather emerges with a curious smokiness, amplified by papyrus's dry, almost grassy quality that adds an unexpected freshness. The Atlas cedar brings pencil shavings and mild astringency, whilst vetiver's earthy rootiness grounds the composition, creating a base camp between the fiery opening and the sweet destination ahead.
Pure amber-vanilla comfort unfolds, with tonka bean adding its bitter-almond facets to prevent this from becoming simplistically sweet. The spices remain as ghosts—a whisper of cinnamon here, a hint of saffron there—whilst the woody notes fade to a soft haze, leaving warm skin dusted with resinous powder and the faint memory of expensive leather goods.
Noir Ambré is what happens when Christophe Raynaud takes the aquatic Issey Miyake lineage and drowns it in spice-laden resin. This is L'Eau d'Issey's shadow self—a fiery, burnished composition that opens with an almost aggressive quartet of warming spices. The saffron leads with its leathery-metallic tang, whilst cinnamon and nutmeg create a dense, almost suffocating sweetness that borders on gourmand territory without fully committing. What saves this from becoming a simple spice bazaar cliché is the peculiar interplay between papyrus and leather in the heart—a dry, smoky quality that suggests old books bound in supple hide rather than biker jackets. The Atlas cedar adds a pencil-shaving astringency that cuts through the amber's honeyed warmth, whilst vetiver provides an earthy anchor preventing the vanilla and tonka from turning this into a dessert trolley. This is for the man who wants oriental opulence with a distinctly masculine edge—think late autumn evenings, cashmere jumpers over tailored trousers, contemplative solitude rather than crowded bars. It's unabashedly sweet without being cloying, woody without being austere, and whilst it may not reinvent the amber-spice wheel, it spins it with enough conviction to make you forget how many times you've smelled this archetype before. The 4.15 rating suggests a crowd-pleaser that knows its lane and stays in it admirably.
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3.9/5 (211)