Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

I don’t envy perfume brands the task of coming up with a ‘story’ for a new release. It’s a thankless job, fraught with paradoxes. If the perfume is sub-standard, its accompanying narrative is seen as a underhanded way of concealing its shortcomings. But if it’s any good, then it stands on its own two feet and abandons the need for extra support. Byredo‘s new 1996 is a case in point. I can just see sales assistants having hours of fun with all its fancy trimmings: it’s named after a photo called Kirsten 1996 taken by fashion darlings Inez & Vinoodh; oh, look, you can see the photo on the packaging; the scent was originally a not-for-sale, limited edition, but it generated such a buzz (quelle surprise!) that it simply had to be made publicly available. All of this may well be true, but it’s also terribly yadda yadda yadda, because the only thing you really need to know about 1996 is that it’s a great piece of work.

Iris and vanilla give it its primary character, the latter imparting a full-bodied sweetness to the former’s fibrous, powdery dryness, with the result that wearing the scent feels like plunging into a gigantic pile of paperbacks stored next to a sugar refinery. Remember the recent Paper Passion, Geza Schoen‘s attempt to capture the smell of a library? It was lame enough when it came it out, but 1996 now makes it even more embarrassing. It possesses the very same texture, the same sense of tangible excitement that comes from picking up a sought-after volume in a second-hand bookshop. And it doesn’t stop there. With a smoke-free incense note and the forest-friendly optimism of violets and juniper, it also features a sharp, futuristic edginess, of the sort you might expect from the likes of Mugler.

Hefty without being oppressive, rich and syrupy without ever seeming crude, it proves that it is still possible to present frequently used accords – not least the amber in the base – in a refreshing light. And if it absolutely must have a story, my version of it would go like this. Once upon a time a classic, vanillic Guerlain got zapped into the future. It fell in love with Maria the robot from Metropolis. They had lots and lots of gorgeously smelling babies. And they lived happily ever after. The end.

[Review based on a sample of eau de parfum provided by Byredo in 2013.]

Persolaise.


Discover more from

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

4 thought on “Persolaise Review: 1996 from Byredo (Jérôme Epinette; 2013)”
  1. You have me wanting to try this even though I find the photograph it is based on a little creepy. I agree with you, sometimes the back stories of perfumes seem a little much now a days – like they are trying cover up for the rushed releases. I am sure it will be here eventually at the Byredo pop up at Paris Galleries.

    1. Dubaiscents, I'm not crazy about the photo either. But I do urge you to try the perfume. There's something very haunting about its construction.

I love hearing from my readers, so please feel free to write a comment or ask a question.