L'Eau d'Issey

Issey Miyake launched L’Eau d’Issey in 1992, the first fragrance of his house, developed in France with Beauté Prestige International, a Shiseido subsidiary. Jacques Cavallier composed it at the prompting of Chantal Roos, who then headed this new division. The name plays on water and on odyssey.

The smell of water

According to Michael Edwards, quoted by Now Smell This, Miyake considered the scent of a woman splashing water on herself the most beautiful fragrance in the world. The house sums up the idea: the scent of a drop of water on a woman, a fragrance as clear as spring water.

Cavallier described his finished fragrance, again according to Edwards, as the spray of a waterfall, the scent of flowers and the smell of woods in springtime. To capture water, he gave the leading role to Calone, a marine molecule that had appeared a year earlier in Escape, by Calvin Klein.

An icon and its descendants

Shiseido now presents L’Eau d’Issey as the brand’s icon. L’Eau d’Issey pour Homme, by the same perfumer, followed in 1994, and the women’s line has since expanded to an eau de parfum, an intense eau de parfum and floral editions such as Pivoine and Solar Violet.

What the house says today

The house sees it as Issey Miyake’s first aquatic floral for women, telling of the purity and luxury of the essential, a fragrance as clear as spring water, where aquatic freshness meets the opulence of white flowers. The Miyake Design Studio directs its creation, from the bottle to the advertising.

The eau de toilette is sold in 25, 50 and 100 milliliters. The house highlights a Duftstars award received in Germany, for best classic women’s fragrance, and counts its bottle among designs meant to outlast fashions and eras.