M/Mink by Byredo

A risky scent, but if you’re hooked on Kouros or Secretions Magnifiques, this is your spot.

Cooking helps you understand segregation timelines. While making pesto, I thought about what a friend’s daughter told me this afternoon: value not just what you say, but how you say it and how you stand. She likes this scent, minus one detail. To her, it’s a strange liquid; to me, a complete aroma. Having old-fashioned tastes forced me to realize others can love these proposals. Let’s talk, kid: your forward-thinking tastes open horizons. It’s an incredible generational olfactory exchange. For me, it’s still rare, an experiment more than a perfume, fascinating but repulsive. It manages to be different from what perfumeries sell. The prelude can be disturbing. Here, the ink works best: a prepotent chemical smell that later turns into a synthetic, dusty, greasy freshness. As Spartacus would say, it’s like working three days in a car workshop. Then, a synthetic shock: cyber incense worthy of The Matrix. The sillage is strong and penetrating. I don’t recommend buying blind.

Since my sense of smell has recovered, I’m attacking. I can’t stand indifference; a fragrance has to speak to me, whether good or bad. And this one does. The lion isn’t as fierce as they say, although for me it’s not a perfume, it’s an experience. It doesn’t smell like ink or shit. The opening is overwhelming but nothing extraordinary. What I love most is that explosion of resinous aldehydes of incense and labdanum, followed by a dirty, earthy patchouli. Then comes a raw, soapy animalic musk that I don’t like, but it fades in intensity and doesn’t bother. The best is the dry down: balsamic, smoky, with turpentine and a touch of camphor. I can’t stop smelling my arm; it’s persistent and long-lasting. It’s masculine, not very versatile, for remembering places and moments, ideal in autumn and winter with grunge wool clothes. A solitary, nostalgic perfume. It transports me to three places: a cornfield in a ghost town in the US with scruffy guys and scarecrows; an abandoned lioness den full of dust, grain sacks, and a Singer machine; or that train from my exams, with high-voltage towers, oxidized cars, and shacks of misery. It’s desolate but human, a mix of illusion and sadness that makes me feel privileged and humble. Thanks to Bofifa for the sample full of mixed feelings.

M/Mink is the most original and strange perfume I’ve ever tried. It’s rare, but within that rarity lies an exotic, almost hypnotic beauty. I compare it to Chihuahuas: the uglier they are, the more we like them because they seem funny; this perfume is the same, it’s not ugly, it has something I love and I don’t know what it is. The aroma is almost linear, it smells the same from the beginning: natural ink and fresh sap from a freshly cut plant, warm and sticky. It’s complex to explain. At the start it’s very intense, but then it wraps in a honeyed tone, warmer and cozier. Sometimes I see a mortar with crushed plants, that green and undefined smell flooding my nostrils. Other times I smell printer ink with a metallic touch, due to the aldehydes. Although it doesn’t sound cozy, it hooks you; it’s a subliminal beauty that whispers a spell. Performance is brutal: I put it on at 9:00 and at 18:45 I still notice it clearly. The trail is very diffusive. It’s for night and cold climates; winter and autumn are its allies, though on a cold morning like today it goes perfectly. It’s risky and not for everyone, but if you have the opportunity, don’t pass it up, you might find a lost treasure.

Damn, I just read Bofifa’s review and I have so many urges to try this M/Mink by Byredo. I’ve never smelled anything from the brand, it’s not sold in my city, and paying ten euros for a 1.5ml tube doesn’t seduce me. But I’ve always liked the house: the names and the bottle design, with that modernist cap that reminds me of some city in a comic. Investigating, I discovered it’s a commission by the studio M/M Paris, creators of the graphics for Balenciaga, Missoni, or Louis Vuitton. They are avant-garde, they love corrupting photos with colors and geometric shapes and finishing by hand in Chinese ink, style bohemian illustrations from the seventies. Could that ink smell mentioned by Bofifa come from there? It’s difficult; some call it a “novelty” item for the smell and because it seems inspired by Dada and Elsa Schiaparelli, a precursor to Moschino’s irony in the thirties. M/Mink wants to make nods to unpleasant concepts, but I’m intrigued that Bofifa likes it, although the perfume seems impractical on purpose. It carries incense, patchouli, honey, amber, and adoxal, a synthetic that mimics the valley lily. I love the name full of references: M/M is the studio, “ink” is ink, and “mink” is mink. Antagonistic concepts. Also, it has a metallic dry-down created on purpose; Ben Gorhman says they wanted it to smell like blood. Not sweet blood, but tons of blood. Isn’t that a similar idea to the first Comme des Garçons perfumes? I remember the Odeur 53 review: “smells like rivers of aluminum, hot blood, car engine…”. Could this be a conceptual perfume in their style? And above all, could it result in an interesting perfume to wear within Bofifa’s idiosyncrasy of aberration? I want to try it.

Well, what can I say about this perfume… First, it’s unique. Or rather, rare. It’s not generic or for everyone, certainly. Although defined as unisex, for me it occupies -invades- all the spectrum of masculine fragrances. I don’t see anything remotely feminine in it. Let’s talk about the opening. It can be extremely aggressive if you’re not used to perfumes like Kouros. In fact, with that last classic, it shares the same animal, musky, dirty accord, which some people remember as urine. This accord is accompanied by clean notes, but too “clean”. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself: detergent or disinfectant liquid notes. The combination causes a bathroom effect that someone has used after several weeks of constipation, and which was immediately cleaned and disinfected afterwards. Said that way, it scares, right? More examples of people I let smell M/Mink after applying it: “Smells like very dirty armpit. And also poop.” “Smells like an attic.” “Smells like car air freshener.” The curious thing is that this “dirty” core is accompanied by a sharp olfactory illusion of Chinese ink, but artisanal Chinese ink, made with natural products of very high quality. The combination of all these notes makes M/Mink a highly suggestive perfume, loaded with evocative images; some talk of stinky bathrooms, others of ink buckets, also of zoos or abandoned factories. I prefer to stick with the idea of a ruined industrial landscape, nocturnal, invaded by grass and wild plants, with shadows of vermin inhabiting it, beautiful but dangerous at the same time. Projection is quite high, and it lasts for centuries. For me, it’s a masterpiece and one of the niche perfumes worth paying its exaggerated price for. It seems of extremely high quality, and there’s nothing remotely similar. But it has a very reduced audience: to wear this, you have to be very individualistic, or bohemian, or used to eighties masculine fragrances (powerhouses). If you wear it, M/Mink will reward you with an aura of threat, of romanticism, of wild poetry that won’t leave anyone indifferent. Note: 10/10