Lovers' Dew

Ancient Maya and Aztec, brought into the present.

A contemporary take on a luxurious Aztec release, built on the relationship between light and water and the folklore around the world that centres both. Fresh, juicy ripples of prickly pear, the tuna de nopal, with juniper berry and a California pomelo. A time-travelling dream.

The hues turn cerulean, chrome and cream. Petrichor gives a mineral, wet-stone inflection beside clean sea salt, a rich and rugged profile, and a coastal accord shines with bright white florals, tropical florals and lavender. Rays of a solar musk over Oaxacan copal wood and ambergris, crafted to be a luminary.

Matteo Parfums is the work of Matthew J. Sánchez, a Southern California native, son of a Mexican-Sicilian father and a Ghanaian-American mother. Sánchez studied applied mathematics and chemistry at UCLA, then spent three and a half years in fragrance and chemistry research before founding the house in Los Angeles in 2017. Every release fuses cultures and concepts: a Korean wine with a Caribbean rum, Chinoiserie, a contemporary imagining of the Aztec, a horchata turned into an amber accord and made in-house.

The work is whimsical and imaginative, and the fragrances are hand bottled and formulated in California. The debut and its two flankers are formulated on the founder's own family heritage, with Latin, Mediterranean and African materials. The rest of the line reaches further, to Korea and the Caribbean, to China and Europe, to ancient Maya and Aztec, distant geographies with shared histories, each release its own fusion.