Maison Margiela
Maison Margiela
672 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The bergamot and lemon flash briefly, cut with pink pepper's dry fizz, before dissolving almost immediately into that unmistakable sunscreen accord—coconut milk meets Transluzone's ozonic shimmer. It's sweet but not edible, synthetic but deliberately so, evoking Factor 30 rather than piña coladas.
The heliotrope emerges properly now, adding a powdery, almost marzipan-like sweetness that tangles with the ylang-ylang's creamy, slightly narcotic florals. The coconut persists but becomes softer, more diffuse, like the memory of scent rather than the thing itself, whilst that aquatic Transluzone keeps everything feeling airy rather than dense.
What remains is a skin-close murmur of clean musk, gently vanillic benzoin, and the faintest whisper of cedarwood—the woody notes finally making themselves known, though they're more suggestion than statement. It's the scent of sun-warmed skin after the shower, slightly sweet, slightly powdery, wholly comforting.
Beach Walk smells of sun cream and warm skin, not ocean spray—Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud has captured the *idea* of the seaside rather than its briny reality. The opening citrus barely registers before that telltale suntan lotion accord takes over: coconut milk sweetened with heliotrope, given just enough structure by the woody-marine transparency of Transluzone. This is the olfactory equivalent of those hazy, overexposed photographs from the 1970s, all peachy skin tones and bleached-out skies. The ylang-ylang adds a faintly tropical floralcy that hovers in the background, never quite stepping forward but lending crucial depth to what could otherwise read as straight Ambre Solaire. Pink pepper provides a whisper of spice that keeps the sweetness from cloying, whilst the benzoin-musk-cedar base gives just enough warmth to suggest sun-heated driftwood. This isn't for beach purists who want salt and seaweed; it's for those who romanticise lazy afternoons on boardwalks, ice lollies melting down their wrists, that peculiar mix of coconut, vanilla, and clean sweat that lingers after a day by the water. Unpretentious and unabashedly nostalgic, it works on anyone willing to smell approachable rather than mysterious. The projection is polite rather than assertive—this fragrance sidles up beside you rather than announcing itself from across the room. Summer in a bottle, certainly, but specifically that drowsy, contented version of summer where nothing much happens and that's entirely the point.
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3.5/5 (1.2k)