Highly concentrated orris goes even further by exuding a purple liqueur-like sweetness… to get a taste of what I mean, imagine you could dye jasmine deep purple…
While I could never tire of the purple facet of iris, I’ve already explored purple thoroughly in Iris Ghalia. Plus, if you own a bottle, you’d know that the profile zooms in on iris’ unique purple sweetness – in IG, the white floral aspect is more an underlying accessory, while it drips sweet purple galore!
So, what if you could zoom in and feast your nose, not on the savory purple flavor of iris, but on the lush white heart itself?
I could give you an iris soliflore and you’d get the very essence of that white creaminess that makes iris such a treasure for a perfumer, after all…
But in the olfactory maze that defines EO, any note, any facet, any aromatic crevice you wish to explore must first pass an initiation rite down through the oud underworld so as to emerge lacquered in the most exotic armor of glistening agarwood resin.
Because oud is so insanely dense, there’s an accent to adorn any scent. Oud that smells of rose, of smoke, of plums and orange peel – that’s the mission: What’s the choicest OUD to grace the white sparkle of iris?
It’s actually not that hard… there’s a super limited class of ouds that are defined by their perfectly complementary profiles.
The hard part is having access to these, the most kinamic ouds on the planet; ouds that are practically impossible to distill today without signing a check for $10K just to buy enough wood to juice a single bottle.
In 2016 we acquired a vintage batch of Malinau agarwood – it was already a collectors’ batch back then – after we weren’t seeing any fresh harvests of the same quality emerge. So, fast forward almost eight years and you can imagine the state of affairs today…
Coburn, Kruger and I personally flew the harvest to one of my teachers in Taiwan, where distillation alone ran for more than a month. Till this day, Borneo Kinam is one of the most soulful oud oils we ever distilled.
Borneo Kinam imbues every facet of Iris Blanc, intertwined with a cast of superb aromatics to wring out the iris’ white…
White champaca and white neroli layered with white rice, white cedar, and white cypress. Tonka bean to caramelize the orris’ buttery blanc just enough to let a dash of white tea and bright classical-white sandalwood infused with water lily exalt Borneo Kinam’s exquisite kinamic core that seeps through the fragrance.
In addition to the lavish champaca-lotus heart, you’ll smell hints of stunning jasmine sambac in tango with the oldest and most limited rose oil in my atelier – Isparta rose that belonged to the mother of the Sultan, which adds a beautiful diffusivity to the white floral iris oud fest.
TOP
Neroli
White Tea
White Cedar
White Cypress
Hojari Frankincense
HEART
White Champaca
Blue Lotus
Vintage Isparta Rose
Jasmine Sambac
BASE
Borneo Kinam (Oriscent Oud Oil)
Orris Butter/Absolute
Sandalwood
Tonka Bean
Grey Ambergris SQ
If you own Iris Ghalia, this perfume is a brand new (and entirely different) profile that will show you the bright white side of iris you never knew existed. If you’ve never smelled what the white creamy floral beauty of iris imparts into a perfume, then you’re in for an oud-iris thrill that’ll arouse your senses like nothing else.