Dylan Peck, image via ABC News, Australia

Sensuality is deep in the DNA of perfumery. For many centuries, scent has been worn to enhance, to tempt. Despite its use as a weapon of attraction, perfume did not, for most of its existence, have a discernable gender. For hundreds of years, men and women wore florals, musks, citrus and a host of other scents (Henry VIII had a damask rose and civet scent). In the 1990s, perfumes marketed as “unisex” became voguish, a reaction, in part, against the glam voluptuaries of the 1980s such as Poison, Kouros and Dune. A new wave of androgynous perfumes typified by CK1 went entirely in the opposite direction with a clean, pared-down aesthetic. But eventually, unisex became synonymous with neutered. Barbara Herman, author and founder of Eris Parfums, set out to retake the sensual for genderfluid fragrance. Eris Parfums newest perfume, Mxxx, doesn’t so much push boundaries as reset them.

Barbara Herman and Antoine Lie at the Fragrance Foundation Awards several years ago

In partnership with master perfumer Antoine Lie, Herman’s Eris Parfums has shown that genderfluid can be more than merely androgynous. Her line of unafraid fragrances infuses bold modernity with the kind of old school sensuality that gave classics like Rochas Femme and Shocking their undergarment of eroticism. Herman explains the  genesis of Eris Parfums Mxxx: “Mxxx’s fragrance profile — animalic and intense — actually reflects the scent profile of one of the early Mx. mods I fell in love with when perfumer Antoine Lie and I began to work on the Mx. Concept … Antoine reminded me that the first 3 fragrances were already kind of intense in their own way, and that perhaps Mx. should be lighter and friendlier. I love Mx. — and it has its devoted fans — but I couldn’t forget that earlier mod Antoine created that was dark and animalic. So, I always knew we would return to that version.”

Tilda Swinton by Richard Avedon, 1993

Brace yourselves; Eris Parfums Mxxx, is intense. But its intensity is quiet, piercing, like Tilda Swinton’s wordless, fiery stare. The opening spray brings a muted animalism, the smell of slept-in skin.  M. Lie dispenses with notes typically assigned to male or female: there are no florals, no powder or aldehydes to signal woman; no leather, tobacco or fougere notes to announce man. Instead, Lie’s composition brings out the underside of more familiar aromas: the incense is ashy, not smoky; the cacao, intensely bitter chocolate but not gourmand. A play between warm and chilly notes ebbs and resurges, as the mineral aspects subsumes the spice, woods and incense notes and then releases them. Burnished peppercorn, uncrushed, pops on the back of my hand. This perfume as both abstract canvas and old master.

At the center of the fragrance is the ambergris, which emerges like a powerful, silent wave that gathers force before it breaks. This is unlike any approximate aroma chemical I’ve encountered; rich, saline, redolent of heated skin otherworldly. A tickle of warm ginger washes in beneath it, and an ancient smell of ash. Then that extraordinary cacao. I’ve encountered this aroma only when biting into the bitterest, highest grade bitter chocolate. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a perfume whose notes so suddenly emerge, fully realized, as they do in Mxxx The notes glow and retreat, as if spotlighted on a rotating jeweler’s velvet.

Eris Parfums Mxxx is dislocatingly stunning; familiar and strange at once. Although its oblique development feels entirely contemporary, Mxxx gives me the feeling that I am breathing in something from another time, perhaps a mythological one. The smell of mineral, of ambergris, conjure some lost shore somewhere I partly recognize but have never been; the odor of recently burnt incense, the suggestion of a distant temple I’ll never reach. It’s rare to smell something you think you may have dreamed. But I have now.

Notes: Madagascan blue ginger, mace (CO2 extraction), saffron, Ethiopian olibanum, pink peppercorn, Trinidad cacao (ultrasound extraction), Virginia cedarwood, sandalwood, Haitian vetiver, Indonesian patchouli, Laotian benzoin, castoreum, 7% natural ambergris, pierre d’Afrique (hyraceum), Madagascan green vanilla (ultrasound extraction).

Disclaimer: Sample of Eris Parfums Mxxx Graciously provided by Eris Parfums. My opinions are my own.

–  Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor

Eris Parfums Mxxx

Eris Parfums Mxxx is produced as a limited edition in extrait only. But thanks to the generosity of Eris Parfums, we have 1.5 ml carded samples of Mxxx  for three registered readers in the USA only. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what appeals to you about Mxxx based on Lauryn’s review and if you’ve tried any Eris Parfums. Draw closes 12/17/2019.

Available at fine stockists in the USA such as Indigo Perfumery, Arielle Shoshanna (as I publish Barbara is visiting there December 14, 2019) and  Luckyscent/Scent Bar as well as Eris Parfums website here

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