L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme, nature at its most masculine. Issey Miyake founded his fashion house in Tokyo in 1971, Miyake Design Studio. He was one of the first Japanese designers to show in Paris. The press defines Issey Miyake as the architect of nature, a man open to the world.
After presenting the brilliant Eau d'Issey pour Femme in 1992, Issey Miyaké's fashion house—very young in perfumery yet already highly renowned in haute couture—repeated the feat by asking Jacques Cavallier to compose, this time, a masculine fragrance. It would be named Eau d'Issey pour Homme and would play on its apparent transparency just as much as its alter ego, to surprise us with its power…
When Jacques Cavallier makes transparency rhyme with elegance with L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme
For Jacques Cavallier, now a highly renowned perfumer, the Eau d'Issey commissioned by Issey Miyaké in 1992 was his very first fragrance. Today, world-famous and behind numerous perfumed compositions for Yves Saint-Laurent, Cartier, and more recently Louis Vitton, Jacques Cavallier has not forgotten what he simply calls his favorite, what others would call his stroke of genius, L'Eau d'Issey.
You know, it is like girls, you never forget the first one. And my first fragrance was Issey Miyake's Eau d'Issey. It was an important starting point for my creative work. Every time I smell it, I am still moved. Jacques Cavallier on Eau d'Issey, for Antidote.
How, then, could one imagine that the perfumer would fail to translate this perfumed emotion into a masculine version, entirely out of step with the trends of the time? This was accomplished only two years later with L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme, which, just as the feminine Eau d'Issey had done, moved us with its freshness as much as it astonished us with its depth.
L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme may even be more assertive than its feminine alter ego, its ultra-fresh facets colliding with its fiery spicy facets. Far from transparent, L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme is a fragrance that, between strength and balance, goes to the essential, Issey Miyaké for L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme.
Eau d'Issey pour Homme, or the well-tempered character of a woody spicy fragrance
Owing to his origins in Grasse, the perfumer behind L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme retained his love of natural raw materials—flowers, of course, but also citrus and spices, which he delights in distilling into magnificent perfumed creations such as L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme.
What I learned from them was above all an approach to raw materials, natural ones in particular. They instilled in me this love, this passion for nature in general and for the wonderful materials one can draw from it to create fragrances. Jacques Cavallier, for Antidote.
It is thus hardly surprising to find, in the opening of L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme, a tonic and fresh composition of mandarin, yuzu, grapefruit, and orange. Coriander lends its aromatic strength to this burst, offered like a cascade of citrus. Then spices collide with these freshnesses, bringing their searing warmth between nutmeg and cinnamon notes. Geranium turns invigoratingly floral, and a marine note brings its iodized freshness. Finally, vetiver, cedar, and amber woods form the mysterious and sensual sillage of this man of L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme. A touch of white musks lends it a comforting cloud of tenderness.