Seven Gates Immortal Shade by Karl.
There are perfumes that attempt to describe a painting, and there are perfumes that inhabit it. Seven Gates Immortal Shade is firmly the latter. Composed by Maïa Lernout, it is a woody, smoky meditation on intimacy and duality, inspired by Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1907–08).
Maia Lernout courtesy of the perfumer.
We know The Kiss well — or so we think. The lovers, enshrined in Klimt’s molten gold leaf, kneel at the edge of a dark abyss. His hands envelop her face; her own hands hover uncertainly, as though surrendering and resisting at once. The scene is sensual, yes — but also ambiguous. There is something unsettling in the way their bodies dissolve into an abstract, glinting pattern, two selves locked yet indistinct.
Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss wiki commons.
Seven Gates Immortal Shade reflects that ambiguity in scent. The opening is resinous and unorthodox: clary sage and myrrh cut through with bergamot, given unexpected depth by the liquorous swirl of rum. The impression is shadowy yet alive, like gold leaf catching the light through smoke. In the heart, a cool and tactile orris root contrasts with bitter black tea and the peculiar, honeyed salinity of immortelle, as though echoing the strange duality of The Kiss: tender and defiant, warm and distant.
The base is where the gold deepens into dusk — amber, tobacco, Madagascar vanilla, and dry woods, the vanilla restrained and atmospheric rather than cloying. Maïa Lernout’s composition lingers close to the skin, becoming an intimate presence, like the faint gilt dust that remains long after the painting has faded from view.
Seven Gates Immortal Shade does not romanticize love as simple devotion. It is, instead, a fragrant exploration of love’s dual nature — its sweetness and its bitterness, its union and its erasure of the self. In Klimt’s vision, these are indivisible; and here, Lernout has rendered them olfactively indivisible too.
Top: Clary sage, myrrh, rum, bergamot
Heart: Orris root, black tea, vetiver, immortelle
Base: Amber, tobacco, Madagascar vanilla, birch, cedar
Karl Topham, Senior Editor
Seven Gates Immortal Shade courtesy of the brand.
Thanks to the generosity of Seven Gates and Parfum Le Dance UK we have a 100 ml of Immortal Shade for one registered reader in the UK or EU ONLY-USA IS NOT INCLUDED. To be eligible please leave a comment about what strikes you about Seven Gates Immortal Shade and where you live. Draw closes 7/18/25 and will be announced two weeks later.
Please read Karl’s WE LOVE THIS STORE: Parfum Le Dance here.
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