Patchouli Hinoki

Where the crispness melts.

The rose is dark and honeyed, and watery lily of the valley thins it without brightening it. Damp earth sits under both, faintly bitter, soil more than root, and it is what carries the weight.

Cedar runs deep and herbal alongside the Japanese cypress, both of them still green rather than dried out. Floral green mandarin and sparkling bergamot are the crispness that melts into the rest, and animalic musk keeps everything close to skin.

Jean Robert takes its name from Jean Robert Charles, a Haitian-born high school French teacher who played for Haiti's national team and ran a men's clothing store called Justin's. Tennis was for recreation, and taken very seriously all the same. What the son remembers is a father who always smelled good, of citrus, spice and wood, and who kept a tray of bottles a child could hold and spray.

Justin Charles came to making fragrances from online media, design, technology, academia and political organising, after ordering an introduction kit online out of curiosity, with a five-month-old daughter at the time. Blending accords came first. Everything is hand-crafted in small batches and filtered several times, with sediment or cloudiness sometimes showing for the natural material in it.