Still Life

Still Life arrests you with a trompe-l'œil of citrus—not the polite bergamot of cologne tradition, but yuzu's sharp, almost savoury brightness caught in the act of decay. Dora Baghriche-Arnaud has staged a peculiar tableau where pink, black, and Sichuan peppers jostle against each other like specimens in a collector's cabinet, each prickling with its own heat signature. The elemi resin adds a turpentine-like astringency that keeps the yuzu from devolving into pleasantness, whilst galbanum's bitter green sap cuts through any sweetness the citrus might harbour. This is citrus viewed through the wrong end of a telescope—compressed, intensified, almost abstract. The star anise introduces an unexpected herbal liquorice that shouldn't work but does, creating an olfactory still life that's half Dutch Masters painting, half Japanese woodblock print. The rum in the base whispers rather than shouts, its molasses warmth tempered by cedarwood's pencil shavings and ambrox's mineral skin-musk. This is for the perfume wearer who finds traditional hesperidics too cheerful, too disposable. It's the scent of someone who appreciates tension in their composition—who wants their citrus served cold, angular, and unapologetic. Wear it when you're feeling intellectually restless, when the weather can't decide between seasons, when you want to smell simultaneously alert and contemplative. It's unisex in the truest sense: belonging to neither, accessible to both.