Where Love Belongs

A key turns in a lock that has been holding.

Andrea wakes in a Provençal farmhouse nobody has explained. Overhead a fan crafted from May lilies turns, releasing sweetness with every pass, and lily of the valley carries that same flower down onto skin. The bed is large and only half of it is Andrea's. The other side is still warm. Musk and ambergris come off the linen with open air and skin. Two favourite books on the table say somebody lives here.

Summer light comes through the half-open window, bergamot and mandarin behind it. Water is running in the next room and the door will not give. Andrea turns away and is suddenly in a meadow at a rustic wooden table, sandalwood under the hands, wildflowers all round, a glass of orange juice that keeps refilling itself. Orange and red fruit sweeten every refill. Then the soft scraping of a key. The door opens at last.

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.