Top Notes 
Heart Notes 
Base Notes 
10/10/2023
Lempi
24 Reviews
Lempi
5
Yin and Yang
Byzance was created to be the smell of balancing contasts, the unlimited inviting border between East and West. To me it's indeed a yin yang fragrance. Soapy clean meets raw animalic, cold meets warm, natural meets synthetic, bright florals meet dark woods. It's also a perfume that must be worn several times to understand its all facets. Feels that every time I wear it, it reveals something unexpected and different, and I find such complex fragrances very exciting and fascinating. It's also something completely new, I have never smelled anything like it. The smell is very challenging to describe, I associate it mostly to an experimental artistic expensive soap or high end spa products in a fine and special boutique hotel.
The accords are blended so well that I don't detect individual notes so much, merely it's a very balanced unique smell with musky-aldehydic quality which might sound like a retro or vintage kind of thing but believe it or not, as another contradiction, it's actually almost the opposite, I find Byzance to be very modern and contemporary, even visionary, like part of a new future fragrance trend which hasn't even been created yet. It's funny that neither musk nor aldehydes are listed in the pyramid, and instead of the notes listed, sometimes I also manage to smell something remotely like coffee beans or cappuccino, which I love, but which isn't listed either. But the two main notes of the listed ones that I find most prominent through the whole drydown are definitely ylang-ylang and mandarin.
I think that this fragrance could easily be signature-worthy because I'm quite sure that you won't encounter anyone else who smells like it, the quality and projection are great, and the way how it surprises your nose again and again is something special and thrilling. However, I'd say Byzance might also be very polarizing or even weird to some, and I recommend to test it first on skin by purchasing Terres Dorées discovery set or Byzance fragranced soap. FYI, Terres Dorées discovery sets offer generous 12 ml screw cap mini bottles which I find very useful and practical, you are able to properly test wear fragrances several times during one month before the discount voucher for a full bottle expires.
Personally I dared to blind buy a 100 ml bottle (well, the price wasn't too expensive so I didn't find it overly risky) but I must admit that first I thought I had made a big mistake as the first spray of Byzance smelled almost unwearable, like a chemical mess. It was so unusual that my senses got very confused. I have tested so many fragrances during my whole life that I should have known that smelling something that still manages to confuse me is actually a very good sign - a sing of something completely different and interesting. None of my most loved fragrances were loves on the first sniffs, and Byzance is no exception - it required a long process of several wearings, and slowly it won me over lingering as an intriguing thought in the depths of my brain and alluring me to sniff again and again. My Byzance will always be there for me, having a desire to astonish me once more with its contradictory yet strangely balancing beauty.
The accords are blended so well that I don't detect individual notes so much, merely it's a very balanced unique smell with musky-aldehydic quality which might sound like a retro or vintage kind of thing but believe it or not, as another contradiction, it's actually almost the opposite, I find Byzance to be very modern and contemporary, even visionary, like part of a new future fragrance trend which hasn't even been created yet. It's funny that neither musk nor aldehydes are listed in the pyramid, and instead of the notes listed, sometimes I also manage to smell something remotely like coffee beans or cappuccino, which I love, but which isn't listed either. But the two main notes of the listed ones that I find most prominent through the whole drydown are definitely ylang-ylang and mandarin.
I think that this fragrance could easily be signature-worthy because I'm quite sure that you won't encounter anyone else who smells like it, the quality and projection are great, and the way how it surprises your nose again and again is something special and thrilling. However, I'd say Byzance might also be very polarizing or even weird to some, and I recommend to test it first on skin by purchasing Terres Dorées discovery set or Byzance fragranced soap. FYI, Terres Dorées discovery sets offer generous 12 ml screw cap mini bottles which I find very useful and practical, you are able to properly test wear fragrances several times during one month before the discount voucher for a full bottle expires.
Personally I dared to blind buy a 100 ml bottle (well, the price wasn't too expensive so I didn't find it overly risky) but I must admit that first I thought I had made a big mistake as the first spray of Byzance smelled almost unwearable, like a chemical mess. It was so unusual that my senses got very confused. I have tested so many fragrances during my whole life that I should have known that smelling something that still manages to confuse me is actually a very good sign - a sing of something completely different and interesting. None of my most loved fragrances were loves on the first sniffs, and Byzance is no exception - it required a long process of several wearings, and slowly it won me over lingering as an intriguing thought in the depths of my brain and alluring me to sniff again and again. My Byzance will always be there for me, having a desire to astonish me once more with its contradictory yet strangely balancing beauty.
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