While I’m not a big believer in prescribing seasons to scents, some accords perfectly conjure the first kiss of spring, in all its optimistic glory. You can go the usual route with juicy and fruity gourmands, but in recent years, I have been intrigued by solar scents—that is, uplifting fragrances that evoke balmy sun-soaked days.
Though I love every one of these perfumes in theory, I’ve found that most can read as overly bright and thus unbalanced on the nose. There are notable exceptions, but Issey Miyake’s Lumiére d’Issey is, in my opinion, the platonic ideal of the olfactive family.
This fragrance doesn’t take direct inspiration from the sun, rather it aims to bottle the purity of a ray of light. It opens with a sparky burst of 100 per cent natural orange blossom. A sunny trail of freesia and velvety white musk follows, before the composition is grounded with moreish pistachio and enveloping sandalwood.
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For perfumers Fabrice Pellegrin and Marie Salamagne, the heady rush of orange blossom was central to capturing the essence of light. “It conveys a luminous quality, and the flower itself needs a lot of light to develop, so there’s a natural connection,” explains Salamagne. Pellegrin adds: “Different elements can evoke different ideas in the mind. Notes like musk, orange blossom, and cypress all contribute to that sense of light—they don’t just smell a certain way, they suggest brightness and clarity.”
To this end, it’s neither blinding nor too peppy; it’s a softer, more elevated take on the solar category for the wearer who doesn’t want their scent to shout, but to linger all day long.
This is something that the perfumers were conscious of. They worked with the Japanese fashion house’s central tenet of minimalism to create a composition that effortlessly balanced harmony and motion. “We wanted to stay true to the brand’s DNA by keeping things simple,” Salamagne told me in Copenhagen, ahead of the fragrance’s global debut. “At the same time, we architecturally approached the perfume, ensuring clarity in what we wanted to convey. We used high-quality ingredients but also aimed to make the fragrance feel modern, fashionable, and accessible.”
I’ve been wearing Lumiére d’Issey since January, and as it was under embargo till recently, I’ve had to field dozens of questions about it. To me, it bottles the essence of spring—it’s warm and optimistic, but also comes with a hint of intrigue. Wear it if you want a fragrance that nods to the season, without being too overt… And guarantees compliments.