Though Fragrantica has this listed as straight up ambergris, this is really a labdanum and resin bomb. My last post was somewhat of a rant over these two notes inspired by finding the note pyramid for this fragrance on Fragrantica, what a joke lol.
So it’s all about amber here, but ambergris? I think not. I don’t really get any of that salty marine aroma though I’m sure it must be in there. It HAS to be, because this is incredibly expensive juice. A 50 ml bottle retails over $700 USD!!! Labdanum in itself is not a very expensive nor rare material at all so my only guess is that the price reflects the materials but this is just an assumption. Mr. Lucas could actually be pulling our leg here, bluffing the ambergris note since the actual notes were not divulged. I was actually surprised LuckyScent added it in as a free sample with my purchase to be honest since it costs so much lol.
What I detect most is honeyed labdanum, which is a balsam from the cistus plant, commonly called rock rose. This is dreamy labdanum though as the turpinoids and tar like qualities have been greatly smoothed out and sweetened. I pick up lots of benzoin which adds spicy cinnamon and vanilla nuances to the composition. There’s actually enough cinnamon that it could be its own note here.
This fragrance has a very leathery overall feel to it. It’s dirty but not cumin or civet dirty, but sweaty birch tar dirty. Brand new leather. It’s also a little boozy from honey. It smells like it should be sticky after being sprayed on skin, as concentrated labdanum tincture can be as well as honey. As a side note, at least honey can be washed off with water. Labdanum is not water soluble and if the absolute gets on skin it has to be dissolved with alcohol or some type of spirit but that’s the nature of resins and most balsams.
While I absolutely adore labdanum and this fragrance masterfully showcases the note as there’s no denying its beauty, there’s no way I could justify buying a full bottle since to me, it’s just a labdanum “soliflore” and I could easily mix one up myself from my collection of EOs and absolutes. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I could recreate this fragrance because I can’t or that my little tincture would be as nice as O’ Hira becauseit wouldn’t be. I don’t have all those materials readily available. I’m nota trained perfumer and I’m not THAT arrogant haha. What I AM saying though, is that I could very easily and cheaply tincture some cistus absolute that would satisfy any urge to wear a labdanum soliflore should one arise lol. And I’d still have my $700. Bottom line: yes it’s nice and the bottle is awesome but it’s not worth the asking price IMO. Next.
Season: Fall/Winter Notes: Who really knows but definitely labdanum lol
This is a strange perfume I really enjoy though it’s not a frag I couldn’t live without, I’ll admit. You definitely won’t smell it everywhere- it’s a very “niche” niche scent. I absolutely adore the flacon though! Stephane Humbert Lucas’s presentation is top notch! You can really feel the quality in the heavy weight of the bottle and especially the cap. The juice is also incredibly potent. They only come in 50ml size but a little goes a long way. One or two sprays max is plenty for good projection.
Mortal Skin opens with a strong, hyper-realistic ink note. It’s sweetened by blackberry and warmed by the smell of unburnt incense, nag champa incense to be precise. On me the scent remains fairly linear as I can still detect all three of these main notes all the way until the end. I also detect cold metallic iris in the composition. The projection is moderate to heavy depending on how heavy your hand is when spraying it on.
This piece is very different from the 777 collection, which mostly center around amber notes and all have a Middle Eastern vibe. In fact, he made it a point of creating an entirely different collection called the snake collection to separate it from the 777 collection.
Some fragrances fall short of living up to their concept. Angel, for example, is anything BUT angelic in my opinion lol. It’s a monster actually haha. Alien as well, being a huge white floral, does not smell “alien” to me. A fragrance called Alien in my book would smell closer to Nebula 1. Mortal Skin with the metallic snake concept, nails it. It’s cold like snake skin. When I try to imagine what snake venom might smell like, this would be it (accurate or not).
I’ve always had a slight fear but at the same time, facination of snakes. Being born and raised in Texas, snakes are part of the culture here because they are literally everywhere. Venomous, non-venomous, we have them all in great quantities. The worst ones are the coral snakes and the pit vipers: copperheads, rattlers, and cotton-mouths or water moccasins, which are aggressive and known to give chase if one gets too close to a nest. The bite of a pit viper can be lethal if not given medical attention, though deaths are rare since there is plently of anti-venom around. Occasionally I find tiny brown grass snakes in my garden and will pick them up. They will interlace themselves between your fingers if you let them and they don’t bite. But I was raised to be cautious of snakes, to know how to identify them, to respect them, and most important- if you see one, give them space, especially if it’s venomous.
Many people are afraid of snakes and for good reason. Even the thought of a snake disturbs some folks, giving them rapid heart beat and the “heebie jeebies”. So this perfume and its snake motif may incite that primal feeling of fear and even disgust.
I also want to point out that the name, “Mortal Skin” is almost a play on words, reminiscent of “Mortal Sin”. And that conjures up images of the whole Adam and Eve story with the snake, who according to legend, committed the original sin and brought mortality to mankind. Needless to say, but the use of snake imagery and metaphor is a much more gothic noir/ avant garde approach to marketing and branding than most perfume houses who typically opt for more light and airy themes like the Angel concept or flowers and candy and such.
I’d say that this perfume is unisex, leaning feminine. The blackberry note gives it a bit of sweetness not typical of masculine fragrances but men can definitely still pull this off.
For those who love unique scents, this is a definite must try. I ordered a sample off LuckyScent for around $7 and sprung for a full bottle after only testing twice. It’s edgy and boldly unique but it’s not for everyone and also not cheap at $290 USD for 50ml, so testing before buying is recommended. But whether you end up loving it or disliking it, this perfume is a very unique experience.
When it comes to writing down my thoughts and feelings about perfumes, I never approach the task flippantly, most especially when it comes to the older iconic fragrances. It took years before I felt I was ready to opine on Shalimar, for example. It’s been around longer than my grandmother after all and what could an inexperienced, beginner perfumista have to say about it anyway? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing worthy of paying any attention to anyway. And Mitsouko is even older than Shalimar, being released in 1919. I just don’t form opinions on things I don’t understand. And it took a long time for me to “get” Mitsouko, but alas, I finally understand.
When I was first introduced to this perfume over 5 years ago by Johnathan Nieto at the Guerlain boutique in Palazzo Vegas, my only thought was why on earth would anyone want to smell like this? I ended up buying Mon Precieux Nectar that visit lol. I knew nothing about Mitsoukos historical context, or what ingredients were even available at the time of its creation, nor the inspiration behind its name, or even its predecessor, Chypre de Coty. No, I knew none of these things and didn’t even consider their existance. All I knew was that it didn’t smell like the squeaky clean, sweetened concoctions that had been in vogue most of my life. To me it smelled sour, musty, and very very dated. And while it IS dated, now that I really understand oakmoss, it no longer smells sour and musty, but sweet and woodsy. I’ve actually grown to adore Mitsouko.
So you might ask, how on earth can something go from smelling bad to smelling good and the only thing that’s changed is a mindset? Well, the nose is funny that way. And really, it’s like anything else that’s an acquired taste. I mean, who really loves beer the first time they taste it? Or “stinky cheese”?
It wasn’t until I started tinkering around with essential oils and absolutes that I developed a love for oakmoss. And after I had tested an original, very rare-over 90 years old formula of Chypre de Coty, the original chypre of mass production, I was inspired to create my own chypre with all natural ingredients just to see what it would smell like. So I researched where to get the best (legit) EOs and Absolutes, researched basic chypre composition, and ended up ordering Patchouli and Oakmoss Absolute from Piping Rock and Labdanum, Cistus, and Bergamot from Gritmans along with a few others, and began my little experiment.
My chypre experiment
Oakmoss has been mostly banned from perfumes in the last 10 years or so due to alleged allergens, but after playing around in it for weeks, I can say I am in no way allergic to oakmoss. And what I discovered was that the Mitsouko I had originally tested was but a shadow of a ghost of its original self, for it contained little to no oakmoss. And oakmoss is an imperative ingredient in any true chypre. Like baking bread without flour, or spaghetti without any tomatoes, a chypre without oakmoss is not really a true chypre.
What I ended up creating over those few weeks tinkering with EOs, was a very “rough around the edges”, unrefined hint of what Chypre de Coty was and I ended up developing a real love for oakmoss. But my experiment was very much lacking, and compared to Mitsouko, the most obvious thing lacking was the peaches.
From my personal collection, Extrait & EdP Mitsouko, both vintage.
It’s funny how things are relative. Like how originally, Mitsouko was sour and musty to my nose with nothing sweet about it. But a side by side comparison of Mitsouko to Chypre de Coty, proved how much sweeter Mitsouko is than Coty because of the peach note. When you cut out all the sugar from your diet, things begin to taste sweeter. And that’s just what I experienced with my nose with my chypre creation experiments and wearing Mitsouko and Coty. I avoided all the sweet gourmands and orientals for a while to focus on chypres, and all the little nuances began to really shine within them.
Screenshot of notes from Fragrantica
The other facet of Mitsouko that I loved even before the fragrance itself grew on me, is the incredibly romantic inspiration behind the fragrance in the first place. Mitsouko was metaphorically meant by Jacques Guerlain, to ring in the end of WWI and to inspire hope for the future. The namesake, Mitsouko, came from the book, La Bataille by Claude Farrere. It is a story of forbidden love between two lovers whose countries were at war against each other. From wiki:
” The story of Mitsouko is found in Farrère’s novel La Bataille (‘The Battle’, 1909), which is a romance based upon Japan modernization and westernization during the Meiji period and upon the 1905 naval Battle of Tsushima when the Imperial Japanese Navy defeated the Russian Imperial Navy . In Claude Farrère’s book ‘La Bataille’, Mitsouko was a beautiful Japanese woman whose name meant both ‘honey comb’ and ‘mystery’, who was married to a noble Japanese Navy officer and who had an ill-fated love affair with an English officer. ”
So that brings me to how I grew to love and appreciate Mitsouko. And after swapping my reformulated EdP for a decant of Royal Extract, I decided to replace it with a vintage edp, that still contained all that glorious oakmoss. And I just looooove it!
Mitsouko is definitely an acquired taste for the young noses of today, that have been spoiled by clean sugary sweet, mass market fragrances. Not only is it an acquired taste, it can be somewhat of a difficult taste to acquire because Mitsouko can be a bit on the temperamental side. The notes that dominate can depend on the weather, humidity, and the moisture levels in ones skin. Sometimes I get lots of peaches and Mitsy is sweet and well behaved, other times, I get more bergamot and vetiver, which do not play so nice on my skin. So if you try it out and do not like it at first, do yourself a favor and try again at another time. I’ve known lots of perfumistas that disliked Mitsy at first, but I don’t know many that didn’t grow to just love it. There’s a good reason, after all, that it’s still in production after almost 100 years when many new fragrances get discontinued within a decade. Despite its temperamental nature, Mitsouko is truly an endearing classic fragrance that I’m sure will be around many more years to come.
Vintage Guerlain print Ad
Season: All Top: Citrus, Jasmine, Bergamot, Rose Heart: Lilac, Peach, Jasmine, Ylang, Rose Base: Spices, Amber, Cinnamon, Vetiver, Oakmoss
💜~FragAmour~💜 A Fragrant Affair 