Masque Milano – Kintsugi perfume review
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”
I have sampled Kintsugi with bated breath, the one perfume I’ve been dreaming to smell ever since spring, after reading the beautiful review Ida Meister wrote for CaFleureBon.
Anaïs Nin said “we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”. I love chypres, they are the fragrance genre that – to me – smells like home, mind you an imaginary home, one I have never seen but always felt gut-wrenching nostalgic for, ever since childhood. (If I were to believe in past lives, the explanation would be simple, but I don’t – and it’s not).
Kintsugi is familiar, pushes the same “faux nostalgia” buttons that a chypre does, but through its core runs a different, shockingly different kind of blood.
There is this movie starring Natalie Portman ”Annihilation” based on the fabulous science fiction trilogy written by Jeff Vandermeer that follows the story of an alien civilization that begins a very insidious conquest of the world, infesting a jungle “x-zone” and changing the physical properties of plants and animals within its borders. The visuals of the film, especially the translucent barrier perfectly captures the whole concept of “the shimmer” – the (vague) barely-there-perceptible manifestation of the foreign presence.
Familiar, yet exhilarating, blurring the fine line between reality and the dormant waters that lie still, at the guarded borders of our subconsciousness, Kintsugi reads on my skin as this beautiful chypre, centered around the heavy breath of flowers, with deep roots entwined below the surface of the forest, with some iridescent, shimmering resinous sap flowing through them, breathing with bio-vegetal metallic lung-thorns, amber petals blooming under a different kind of inverted spring sun. There is an almost “lovecraftian” feeling of mystery, depth and some sort of presence watching you from this scent, it becomes you, it changes you and then it bounces back, like one mirror reflected in front of another.
Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique.)
Head Notes: Bergamot E.O., Magnolia China E.O., Savoury Amber
Heart Notes: Golden Suede, Centifolia Rose Grasse abs., Violet Leaves abs.
Base Notes: Benzoin Siam, Raspberry Leaves abs., Patchouli Coeur, Vanilla abs.
If you like Masque Milano – Kintsugi, also try: Love Kills
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