Room 1015 Wavechild courtesy of the brand
Utilising a note like watermelon in a perfume, is always going to be somewhat polarising – especially when it’s presented in such an unabashedly sweet manner as it is in Wavechild from Room 1015. Many people’s scent memories of watermelon may already be heavily candied: a synthetic pink melon flavouring that’s paired with crystalline sugar to elicit a quick sweet fix. It can instantly transport you back to your adolescence, to clouds of youthful body sprays, weekends spent aimlessly wandering in shopping centres and the aroma of cinema pick & mix. But for Room 1015 Wavechild the note is deployed more in reminiscence of the beach. It speaks of easy-going days; coconut-tinged surfboard wax, stiffened, matted saltwater hair and sun bleached pastel coloured swim shorts.
Jerome di Marino of Mane courtesy of the perfumer
Room 1015 Wavechild is vividly carefree. It’s uncomplicated; an intentional blast of ‘90s boardwalk nostalgia from perfumer Jérôme di Marino. Underneath the chewing gum burst of the orange and watermelon opening lies an aquatic heart that – thankfully – does not lean into a mineral/iodine, salt note. It’s definitely not the smell of a tumultuous briny ocean, it’s more of a subtle salicylate-type salt impression that flirts with the peachy, fruitate undertones and the ambroxan creating a cheerfully aquatic shimmer that – much like a wave does – seems to retreat and reappear while the clean sweetness of ethyl vanillin and cocoa clings onto skin like a sunscreen.
Room 1015 Wavechild courtesy of the brand
Flipping a familiar flavouring into a perfume is something Room 1015 has done before with 2020’s Cherry Punk. That worked fiercely as an exploration of contrast: the cherry felt plump and ripe whilst the leathery aspects managed to underscore such an obvious fruit essence with a slight sense of threat and unpredictability. It felt gutsy and new and yet it made complete sense. And whilst Wavechild doesn’t try and strike such a loud contradiction, it does make you salivate and rethink or revisit a note you thought you knew or had already dismissed.
hypercolor shirts circa 1990s Smithsonian magazine
Room 1015 Wavechild is audacious – a sugared watermelon with sun blushed aquatic hints and an impressively clean vanillic dry down. After consuming the brand’s surf culture inspired brief and a week or so of wearing Wavechild I’ve started thinking of it as an olfactory Global Hypercolour t-shirt – remember those bold, colourful shirts that changed their hue when exposed to heat? Not everyone in the world is going to love wearing heat reactive tie-dye in a full array of bright neon colours but those that did back in the ‘90s, probably still do now. After all, isn’t one man’s bold and unique deployment of a watermelon perfume, just another man’s Jolly Rancher?
Notes: orange, mandarin, lemon, watermelon, coconut, amber woods, cocoa, ambergris
Disclaimer: Room 1015 Wavechild sample provided by Jovoy Mayfair.
–Oli Marlow, Contributor
Wavechild is sold out everywhere, but leave a comment because we are trying to get a sample
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