Iris silver mist Serge Lutens 1994

Iris Silver Mist by Serge Lutens.
I believe this is a cult classic by now, to me, not a perfume, but bottled emotion. This is a very aloof and cold perfume that somehow instills that feeling in you. Even today it is hard for me to think that Roucel created this. I never had guessed. It feels more like a Lutens and Sheldrake potion of sorrow.
It should not be analyzed technically, but rather, emotionally. I never wear this except for myself. If I'd wear it, it would have to be all black, suited up. The composition exploits the most bitter, chalky, and earthy facets of orris, and it amplifies them with the help of aptly chosen notes and accords such as vetiver, galbanum, clove, frankincense, and cedar. There is a hint of resins in the base, like the promise that will never be fulfilled. It is pointless to talk about notes here, as there are only accords, only whispered suggestions. The opening is cold and bracing, bitter, and somehow metallic. Like tasting the thick fog during a cold Winter night. Then the frozen earth speaks to you. Rooty orris, like pulling the rhizomes from the bounds of the earth only to have them shatter into our hands, fragile as ice thorns. At last, cedarwood only reinforces the geometry of ice blocks with its naturally sharper profile, the frankincense circles back to the imagery of thick fog, while the faint resins almost seem to call to the pale moonlight, trying to guide your way through the cold, foggy night. Cold and poised, beautiful and aloof.
In my mind, if Bram Stoker's Dracula had a signature scent, it would have been Iris Silver Mist. It is one of those perfumes that everyone passionate about this hobby should at least try once, although it might require extensive exploration to fully grasp.

IG:@memory.of.scents

This is an astonishing fragrance. The opening is a bit carroty, but then it is pure iris. The proudest one in your garden, standing alone. Despite the wet earth clinging to it, the iris is disconsolate and lonely, but the iris would never admit to such a thing. The air is cold.

The iris note lasts throughout, but it changes slightly in the middle. There is a soapiness there - but not a bad one -- it just reminds you not to taste this iris. She will not allow such intimacies.

The iris eventually settles into her earthy, woody base. I get vetiver here, but then it blends in with the cleanness of sandalwood and cedar. There is a faint spiciness here too.

This is not perfume.

It is either art or a form of water boarding, but it's not a perfume.

Iris Silver Mist teeters on a tightrope between aching beauty and ugly brutality for much of its duration. The first blast out of the gate is of the purest iris root note I have ever smelled - an exhalation of pure luxury. Then, as suddenly as it began, the buttery iris root note is whipped away and replaced with a wall of poisonous aromas that lunges for your throat and just keeps coming. I can almost taste the smell on the back of my tongue - mud, earth, metal, roots, dry ice pumped from a machine at a festival. The mix of aromas is unsettling and quite brutal, a cold stew of raw potatoes soaking in ice cold water, rotting carrot tops, and something that recalls the acrid fug of alcohol fumes that comes off a hot Poitín still.

There is also the high-toned acid sting of fresh urine about it, like that of a baby's nappy but devoid of any of the warm, sweet-sour honey and hay overtones that makes baby pee such a friendly smell. The urine aroma here is cold and denatured, ureic acid grown in a sterile lab. This is not of human origin. This striking stink is, of course, iris - pure iris rhizomes pushed to the limit by Maurice Roucel, who, under the urging of Serge Lutens to make it more, more, MORE iris, dumped a little-used iris nitrile called Irival into the mix.

Iris fragrances are usually icy, polite, and suggestive or either lipstick or the lining of an Hermes purse. Iris Silver Mist is the bared teeth of a dog. It snarls.

It's not at all nice to wear, at least not in the first hour, but it stirs my soul in a way that more pleasant, wearable perfumes do not. The drydown is a soft iris suede with dabs of creamy woods and a soft breath of spice. Not distinctive at all, and actually kind of weak, but we still have the memory of that opening to drop our jaw to the ground.

Iris Silver Mist makes me think of uncomfortable scenarios - teenagers facing the wall at the end of the Blair Witch Project, the tops of those dark pine trees swaying in the wind in Twin Peaks every time Coop entered the Red Room in the Black Lodge, the guy in nothing but y-fronts and a WW2 gas mask striding across a corn field at the end of episode 3 of True Detective…..

Think of basically anything that has ever chilled your soul, and that's Iris Silver Mist.

It is a work of art. Art in a gimp mask, yes – but still, art.

Legend says that Serge Lutens, before the iris craze was "in" commissioned the irisest of iris scents to Maurice Roucel. He told him something like: "pump up the volume at the max with this iris note. No limits allowed".
Everything Roucel proposed wasn't enough.

After multiple prototypes, Roucel was exhausted. He decided to create a formula in which every single ingredient even remotely related with the iris molecule was included. He even included ingredients no-one ever even considered, even the most tough and brutal ones.

Iris is the note of elegance.
Wanting the iris to scream is like listening to Chopin at such a high volume that the music starts to distort. The gentle melody becomes industrial-like, Throbbing Gristle's outtake-like.
Iris Silver Mist feels just like this: breathtakingly beautiful and sinister. Iris at its purest and loudest form: earthy and melancholic, powdery and gloomy. Stendhal-syndrome effect is immediate.
The softness of the iris quickly gets austere, eerie, beautifully menacing.

And then there's the name of the fragrance.
Iris silver mist.

In the mist, you can run if you only want to.
It's your instinct that stops you as your eyes can't see.
This perfume is like a glacier where you want to dive into, but you cannot.
You stay there, at the edge of the abyss.
Each time you wear it, it's always like the first time you meet your true loved one.

Unbeatable masterpiece.

Not for the novice. The first hours it is the scent of of Count Dracula, slowly moving through a cellar cemetery in an abandoned castle at midnight. Silvery moonlight through iron gated ceiling windows, tiny, sad irises observable in the windows edge. Dirt and old molding leaves on the ground. He stops moving, only his scent still lingers in the air.

After two hours we are still in his castle, but he has left the basement for the main hall. Abandoned, with a broken roof, silent rain drips from the night sky above. Now perhaps Count Dracula's nephew can wear the perfume, it has morphed into a younger dirty and ice cold iris smell.

After yet another two hours we go outside into an oak forest. The sun finally rises, but is covered by a wet, grey fog. It gives eerie shodows on the path we walk. As we continue through the cold, damp, mossy forest we still se irises peeking in the shadows. Finally I can wear the scent, it is now the perfume of a mere mortal. If you wear a cape.

Impossible to rate.