Yuzu Fou Parfum d'Empire 2008

It’s briefly like a still damp hemp mat is being rolled out with a flourish in front of you, allowing you to stride across it while observing the stalls filled with green and yellow fruits and herbs as you stroll through the market of fruit and herb vendors in the heart of Tokyo. The countless box-shaped displays of the bamboo stalls form narrow alleys, neatly piled up into cubist backdrops, revealing the hazy outlines of skyscrapers in an endless city at their ends. The streets simmer under the sultry heat of the rainy season, everywhere there seems to be a film of moisture on the surfaces. As soon as you brush against the bare skin of your forearms, you want to dry, cool, and disinfect your hands at the nearest brightly blinking, beeping, and talking vending machine.
You are sure that there are machines for that here too, but unsuccessful in your search, of course, because nothing about the purpose and function of the brightly labeled boxes that seem to stand on every corner would be understandable to you. As if by some biological peculiarity, it seems that the locals are blessed with no moisture clinging to their faces; housewives, businessmen, teenagers in their baby clothes and dyed hair rushing through the narrow alleys all seem to have, as if by appointment, turned off their sweat production.

The brief commotion that the earthy scent of the damp hemp causes you as you enter the market dissipates within seconds, and the bitter, sour, stunning liveliness of the scent of bitter oranges, which seem to be omnipresent here, hits you like a blow. They smell sour, reminiscent of the scent of freshly grated lemon peels, yet more complex, deeper, their aroma recalling grapefruit and limes, without spreading the sulfurous dullness of grapefruit or the penetrating exoticism of limes. It smells cool, a blessing on this damp, hot day.

Right next to it are the stalls of the herb vendors, the bundles standing in vase-like woven bamboo containers or lying neatly arranged in small wooden boxes following a geometry unknown to you. Mint, you crush a few leaves between your fingers: Not chewing gum mint, as expected, which would fit well in this incomprehensible environment, but a herbal, dark, stemmy-woody mint aroma, the plants dried in the warm wind and magically revived. Beneath it, another bundle of a small scent explosion: Aromatic, green, citrusy lemon verbena, with its metallic bitter scent that you can almost taste, a dark, herbal note that delicately underlies the zestiness of the bitter oranges.

You still think you can perceive the earthy scent of the damp hemp mat, which occasionally rises in this exquisite sour-bitter mood, but soon the bitter impressions marry with the shimmering woodiness of cedar and warm, deep, pleasantly dry, and slightly rubbing musk. Something reminds you of the mineral darkness of oak moss, but it’s just an illusion; the heat is playing tricks on you, the bitterness and eccentricity of the scent create this impression. Yet, and this surprises you the most, the scent of your damp skin feels like a cooling, dry, ideally tempered, powdery silk cocoon, everything fits, you have arrived at yourself, and the heat and the city around you can no longer harm you.

...

The Corsican Marc-Antoine Corticchiato, the nose behind Parfum d´Empire, aimed to create an homage to modern Japan with Yuzu Fou, so the marketing saga goes, and his perspective on it is, without me being able to specify or explain it concretely, French, just as the exquisite scents he creates are French. Whether it may be that his fragrances always have a certain awkwardness and eccentricity, with scent components that are often initially hard to get used to, but then find a refined use in the overall composition and exert a strong allure, or that he apparently enjoys drawing on historical scent archetypes or historical figures to give fragrances a story, or because he repeatedly addresses the theme of Chypre (the most beautiful orange Chypre I know comes from him) in an exciting way (which hits the mark for me anyway), his fragrances often have a unique elegance and finesse that I associate with "French." This may be as clichéd a characteristic as it wants to be, Parfum d´Empire was and is one of my personal brand discoveries of the past year, and Yuzu Fou is currently my summer favorite, unfortunately grossly underrated here on Parfumo.

I sincerely hope that the fragrances of the brand will soon be available again; in Germany, they have apparently only been available from stock since the beginning of the year. If anyone knows more, please feel free to share.
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Update July 2019: Apparently, the PdE fragrances will be available in the German market starting September this year.