Fiery Fig

Mia knows the dance before ever hearing the song.

The dirt road is bumpy, the truck kicks up dust through acres of farmland, and the summer heat comes in dry at the window. At the farmhouse the smell of figs arrives. A cedar table has been laid with them and decorated with the leaves, large, glossy, leathery, running pale green to dark. Fig leaf covers that table; cedar holds it up.

Then the running starts, out the back door and through hills of trees, fig bark going past at speed, toward music and a sunset and a gathering with faces painted emerald and burgundy. Coconut and fig milk go round in the drinks, spilling as everyone turns. On a stage a plain-faced guitarist works the strings, hands weathered. Ripe fig is still in the mouth from the table. However long the dancing goes, the music does not stop.

NEYDO works from a single source: the olfactory dream. Smell during sleep is rare, and when it happens it arrives at an intensity waking life does not reach. The house collects accounts of it from anyone who will send one, keeps them in a living archive, and passes some of them to a working nose to be translated into something that can be worn on skin.

The credit on every release is the first name of the person whose dream it was. Bertrand Duchaufour, Julia Rodríguez, Maud Chabanis, Soizic Beaucourt, Lucas Sieuzac and Joëlle Lerioux Patris have all taken one across, and the fragrances are made in France. Nothing in the line is styled after a trend. The archive stays open, dreams keep arriving, and a few of them become the next ones.