Chypre Isli

Passion in its night register.

White flowers arrive already dark, with incense underneath them from the start. Bergamot and mandarin are gone almost immediately. Orange, spice and heliotrope keep the middle from settling, and ylang gives the whole thing its exotic edge.

Then oakmoss, patchouli, cedar and sandalwood pull it down and hold it there. Red pepper sharpens the spice; myrrh keeps it dry. A floral chypre, mixed to obtain a powerful elixir of love, and irresistible is the word for it. Nothing about it is designed for daylight.

Maison Incens is a French house built out of a book. Philippe Constantin was born in Cameroon to a French father and a Moroccan mother, grew up in Casablanca, and went to France at eighteen to study economics and international law. The plan was an international organisation and work for people in need. Meeting Jean Claude Gigodot ended that. The house is named for Constantin's father, who left behind a compilation of paintings on leather and stories told in smell.

The releases are the olfactory signature of that book. Each belongs to an opus in the story of Artganis, an unknown civilisation whose life is ruled by smell. The Artganians travel and bring back what they find, and the opuses follow them: their own endemic essences, then the Morocco they settled in, then the divinatory arts they watched, then the legendary earthly materials themselves.