As I think is apparent for those who read me regularly I am all about the perfume. I rarely comment on the bottle or the marketing campaign because I am all about what I wear on my skin. So far the PR or the bottle have never managed to make it out the door with me. Most of the time it is white noise to me. Except sometimes it is so precious it makes me cringe a bit. This was how I approached the new Byredo Unnamed.
Ben Gorham
Byredo Unnamed is meant to represent the tenth anniversary of the brand. For this occasion, owner and creative director Ben Gorham decided it would be interesting to leave the name off and give those who purchase a bottle a sheet of stick-on letters so you can give it your own name. There is a page on the Byredo website with pictures of the various names people have put on their bottle. It looks like a deranged Pinterest page of narcissists. The concept was so irritating I wanted to skip the whole thing; but the perfume inside the nonsense is really good around a heart of two of my favorite notes orris and violet.
Jerome Epinette
Mr. Gorham once again works with perfumer Jerome Epinette. This is a culmination of this unbroken partnership which has spanned 32 fragrances making Unnamed the thirty-third. They have produced some truly beautiful perfumes. Byredo is a place where M. Epinette often has the chance to display a new isolation of a natural source. It is what has made me enjoy so many of these releases over the last few years. Unnamed continues this trend.
Usually when one celebrates you pop a bottle of champagne. Apparently around the Byredo offices gin must be the alcohol of choice for celebrations because that is where Unnamed begins. M. Epinette provides a chilly gin accord matched with some pink pepper floating around. The gin pops like a dry martini. This then leads to the heart where M. Epinette uses a full spectrum violet joined with an orris fraction called “orris stem”. This is a powder-free isolate focused on the earthy rooty quality with a fascinating green thread running through it. With a more florid violet it provides a foundation for that exuberance to expand upon. The base is a leather accord made up of balsamic components, moss, cashmeran, and musk. It provides a bit of rough-hewn leatheriness to finish things.
Unnamed has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.
Unnamed is a fitting exemplar of what Byredo has done well the past ten years. It also feels like a nice congratulatory pat on the back between Mr. Gorham and M. Epinette. I like it quite a bit. As for a name? I’ll let others figure it out.
Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Byredo.
–Mark Behnke
