M/Mink Byredo 2010

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5.8 / 10 106 Ratings

A perfume by Byredo for women and men, released in 2010. The scent is synthetic-woody. The longevity is above-average. It is being marketed by Manzanita Capital.

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Main accords

Synthetic

Woody

Spicy

Resinous

Green

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Adoxal

Heart Notes

Frankincense

Base Notes

Clover honey

Patchouli

Amber

Perfumer

Jérôme Epinette

Ratings

Scent

5.8106 Ratings

Longevity

8.181 Ratings

Sillage

7.173 Ratings

Bottle

7.583 Ratings

Value for money

5.019 Ratings

Submitted by Beryll, last update on 07/31/2025.

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

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Reviews

5 in-depth fragrance descriptions

06/18/2014

jtd
484 Reviews

jtd

Helpful Review 7

backstory

M/mink gives you two choices. Read the story and believe the myth, or smell the perfume. I'd recommend smelling perfume. It's wonderful.

The story goes that, in lieu of a traditional brief, the perfumer was asked to translate a block of solid ink into a perfume. I’m cynical enough to believe that this sort of premise is intended more for its ex post facto story value than for any actual artistic impetus. The block of ink might have been a motivating factor in the conceptualization of mink, but it is a fallacy to believe that the perfume continues to be 'about' ink. For the wearer, the ink bit is just a back-story. After the fact, such stories actually make a perfume appear contrived or a producer pretentious, and to get hooked into this sort of narrative even before you’ve smelled the perfume is limiting for the wearer.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of M/mink. I simply disagree with everything I've ever read about it starting with the PR from Byredo. I don't find it linear. I don't think it's an assault on the senses. I don't find it anything like Sécrétions Magnifiques. It does share a cool, object-like quality with Comme des Garçon 2 Woman. While it does have a matte sweetness to it that suggests an inky quality, this is just one of its many abstract attributes. Like Bvlgari Black by Annick Menardo, M/mink is a successful creation of a new, beautiful scent that neither imitates a botanical scent, nor attempts to to offer you a recognizeable fragrance.

from scenthurdle.com

03/22/2019

7
Bottle 7
Sillage 8
Longevity 7
Scent

Darkbeat
350 Reviews

Darkbeat

2

Beauty within the strange and exotic

M/Mink is the most original and strange perfume that has passed through my hands, it is rare, but within that rarity, there is an exotic beauty, almost hypnotic, that is difficult to explain. I compare it to the Chihuahua dog breed, the uglier they are, the more we like them, because they seem funnier, because this perfume is the same, despite its eccentricity, not ugliness, it has something that I love and could not say It is, but I like it.

It has an almost linear aroma, from the beginning it smells the same, a mixture of natural ink and the fresh sap of a freshly cut plant, a warm and sticky sap, with a lovely resinous tone. I do not know how to explain it, it is complex to describe, it could be one of the most difficult perfumes to explain that I have found. This scent of the beginning, remains almost all the life of the perfume, except that, in the output is very intense and as it develops, it is wrapped by a warm tone, which makes it more warm and enveloping, and very cozy.

Sometimes I get the image of a mortar full of plants crushed with a pestle, and that green smell, fresh and undefined, is what floods my nostrils. Others, I smell the ink of my printer, with that metallic touch, I suppose, for the aldehydes, and although the description of the odoriferous sensation is not very cozy, the aroma has something that hooks, it is a subliminal beauty that whispers to you Heard a spell, so that you fall before it.

The performance of this perfume is very good, I put it this morning around 9:00, right now it is 6:45 pm and I still perceive it clearly, and wake is not bad at all, being very diffusive from the beginning.

It is a nocturnal perfume and cold and temperate climates, winter and autumn could be your best allies, although, on a cold morning, like today, you can enjoy it, perfectly, this goes, according to the tastes of the consumer.

A risky perfume and not suitable for everyone, but if you have the opportunity to try it, do not let it pass, because you could find a lost treasure.

03/28/2018

QuercusAlbus
72 Reviews

QuercusAlbus

1

"fresh aldehydic floral waxy watery" (!?)

The title (the contents of the quotation marks, that is) is a direct copy & paste of the ¯odour descriptor¯ of ~aldoxal~ fræ the data sheet of same of the website of the ~Good Scents Company~. Somehow, I think the notes-list given herein is a little ^incomplete^, to say the least! I'm sure this stuff ^must^ have civet, or something like that, in it. Or oil of cypriol - why didn't I think of that in the first place. Yes, it's a very °oil-of-cypriol-y° 'fume, this one! even if it's not actually that that does it.

I was also surprised at how camphoraceous the aroma of this stuff is. I normally ^do not want^ my 'fume to smell camphoraceous; but in this case I'll make an exception: it has so much other °goodies° in it, I'm willing to abide a little ¯camphoraceosity¯!

This is pretty-much what I expected (unlike ~Sécretions Magnifique~, by which I am just baffled). It's a thunderously skanky, almost ~industrial~ brew: I think ~industrial skank~ might even be the best figure for it - it is the best I can think of so far; & I unequivocally (apart fræ the camphoraceosity) love it. It ^does indeed^ thoroughly requite its ~controversial~ label.

08/02/2023

DJSOVIET
1 Review

DJSOVIET

1

Calming weirdness

Being in the full wave of experimentalism, and since this kind of attitude is hardly backed by the chance of sample-smelling, this was a blind buy (as was the case with Secretions Magnifique by ELDO).
To be clear: I’m not one of those inexhaustibly worshipping Byredo fans.

So, back to us, this frag «is not for the uninitiated».

On paper and on my skin is two different stories.
On paper, it opens strongly uric, pretty repulsive, to quickly turn into salty and floral notes (which then stay till the end).
On my skin, it’s pure ink (I used to work in publishing facilities, and M/MINK reminds me of the mixed smell of ink and solvents from the printing film developing machines). There’s a floral touch from time to time, but it’s subtle and powdery.
I can’t say it’s unwearable, but you need to exactly know when and why.

07/31/2025

ClaireV
958 Reviews

ClaireV

1

Kinky and weird

My taste is the opposite of edgy. I once bought a set of that Ephemera Sound perfumes - you know, the ones that smell like burned-out electrical sockets and plastic sheeting - and sold it on as quickly as was decent. I don't ever want to smell Secretions Magnifiques, not out of intellectual curiosity, not even as an exercise to expand my olfactory knowledge, and definitely not by accident.

But I like M/Mink.

I had smelled it once before, in Rome in 2013, just when I was beginning to get into fragrances and I really liked it. Two years on, reacquainting myself with it in Senteurs d'Aillheurs in Belgium, I found it extraordinary - a salt-encrusted, honey-lacquered door in an abandoned building in a post-industrial city. If perfume has a color, this is a sort of matte buff-nude-tan thing. There's a fair amount of anchovy paste in this, too - a metallic saltiness that is really quite objectionable, but very arresting.

Reviews for M/Mink tend to paint it as either genius or the most disgusting smell in the world (up there with Secretions Magnifiques), but this is a perfume that depends on the specific set of olfactory memories we all carry around in our heads. So where many people pick up on a horrendous stench of fruity bleach in the topnotes, I smell only the clean, fishy stink of calligraphy ink and toner fluid from the school supplies closet. The high-toned, metallic bleach/ink note is followed by a denatured patchouli, by which I mean patchouli that has been leached of its damp, earthy nuances and made into a dry, unsweet dust, casting a glum, matte brown, stale-cocoa powder like shade over the whole thing.

Incense too, but this is not the ecclesiastical smoke that cleanses the soul during mass. This is the cold, dead air creeping among the vestments and flagstones in the sacristy. Rather like Messe de Minuit, another perfume that smells like dead, inert air in a sacristy, it reminds me of my Catholic childhood. Not of high mass, but of the ordinary, day-to-day dealings I would have had in the church, which was located across from my school and played a huge role in our lives. This part of M/Mink reminds me being in and out of the sacristy before doing a reading for Sunday mass, or helping the priest fold away his amice. It smells like creeping mold, dust, inert air. The likeable stench of centuries-old church things.

What creates this mold effect? It must be the combination of metallic incense with that dry, matte-brown patchouli dust, and unsweet honey and beeswax. I don't know though. It's a mysterious alchemy, how all of these alive, moving elements combine to produce a smell that is so stale, so centuries-dead.