Stéphane Humbert Lucas
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Blackberry splits open immediately, releasing its tart-sweet juice across a bed of cracked cardamom pods and saffron threads that smell more medicinal than floral. The fruit reads less jammy confection and more like berries crushed against warm skin, their anthocyanin stain mingling with the metallic bite of spice. Within minutes, opoponax begins its amber glow from beneath, sweetening the sharpness into something almost narcotic.
Iris emerges in its rootiest form, buttery and slightly musty, its cool violet tones providing brief respite before sandalwood's creamy woods envelope everything in warmth. The opoponax intensifies here, its sweet myrrh quality becoming the composition's backbone whilst labdanum adds its leathery, almost cistus-like tenacity. Blackberry has retreated but left behind a phantom fruitiness that makes the whole affair feel ripe and alive rather than merely woody.
What remains is a trinity of ambergris, musk, and labdanum creating a second-skin effect that lives up to the fragrance's name—salty-sweet, resinous, unmistakably animalic. The woods have become abstract, more felt than smelled, whilst that persistent opoponax hum continues like a low frequency you sense rather than hear. This is where Mortal Skin reveals its addictive quality: intimate, slightly soiled, utterly human.
Mortal Skin drapes itself across the body like a second epidermis woven from spice-dusted resins and dark fruit stains. Stéphane Humbert Lucas has orchestrated a composition where blackberry maceration meets the golden warmth of opoponax, creating an almost edible opening that quickly turns feral through judicious doses of cardamom and saffron. This isn't the polite, powdered iris of haute parfumerie—it's iris root rendered earthy and nearly animalic, its violet-tinged butter smeared across sandalwood and then tanned into something approaching leather through sheer force of labdanum. The resinous heart beats strongest here, with that sweet myrrh quality of opoponax threading through everything like amber honey, whilst ambergris whispers salinity at the edges. There's a particular alchemy in how the fruit never quite disappears; instead, it ferments into the resins, lending an almost wine-stained quality to the woods. This is for those who find most niche fragrances too cautious, too concerned with wearability. It demands skin with heat and chemistry, the kind of wearer who understands that perfume should alter your presence in a room. Best in the colder months when its dense, honeyed darkness can unfurl without overwhelming, Mortal Skin occupies that rare territory between gourmand temptation and ancient resin ceremony—deeply carnal yet undeniably refined.
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3.7/5 (100)