Miyako
Auphorie (2015)

Miyako from Auphorie. There's a good reason this perfume is a mainstay in their line. Without a doubt, it is their crowning achievement. Art and Olfaction winner and highly praised by Luca Turin (whose rating system eludes me for the most part).

Miyako was an instant love for me, and that hasn't changed over the years. If I am to keep one perfume from the house, is this one. They struck a perfect balance here, no doubt. Exploiting the best of Osmanthus as an ingredient while stretching its olfactory profile and keeping the composition on the brighter side of the spectrum, as opposed to the latest release, Osmanthe Oud.
Miyako feels like a day walk through a Japanese village during Spring, the scent of tea wafting from the Tea Houses nearby. The opening is bright and invigorating. A blast of juicy yuzu and sweet peach, adorned with green tea and aromatic herbs. It cheers you up and energizes you. The middle phase is all about Osmnthus, already overlapping with the base to suggest the suede leather impression and the woods. Maybe some Orris or Jasmine is being used as well as I sense some other white floral touches and a hint of chalky-earthiness that Orris can sometimes give off. The leather impression is soft, suede-like, and almost dry in feel. The woods are on the creamy side, buttery, and not spicy or sharp as one might expect reading Cedarwood and Hinkoki among the ingredients. Some synthetic musks round up the base, and they fit in nicely. Of all synthetic musks, I feel the Au brothers are among the few who know how to use them to their maximum potential.

A solid perfume in my books, and if there is one to try or even blind buy from this house, it should be this one, granted you like Osmathus and East Asian aesthetic and flavors.

IG:@memory.of.scents

I get why Luca Turin was so enthused. Miyako is as close to the pungent, slippery smell of osmanthus absolute that is possible to get. Stale, varnishy Hindi oud with lots of dusty old furniture and dried, rhino foreskins, dust motes, and the oud-adjacent funk of Époisses, membrillo paste that’s on the turn, and over-brewed black tea so fermented and leathery it makes the membranes in the back of your throat seize up. Miyako is initially less perfume than something like salted plum or beef jerky. It’s good. No, it’s great, actually, with the qualifier that you have to really love the feral, buttered-apricot intensity of the absolute.

It is also, and how can I say this politely, so intensely sweet, and so obnoxiously, unrelentingly jammy that my ladystache starts to sweat. All that peach jam business is backed up by a stonkingly smoky, resinous amber the size of an Amber Absolute. It is a tale of two halves – osmanthus absolute and labdanum absolute, which are in and of themselves two very complex naturals.

And that is my main complaint, really. In typical indie fashion, the perfumers lean on their starring raw materials to do all the heavy lifting. So, when you smell the funky apricot jam, the leather, the animalic aspects, the incense, the resin, the smoke, you think, my God, but this thing is a colossal feat of perfumery. Too bad, then, that the seams between the two mahoosive start materials are so apparent. It makes me wince to see so clearly past the curtain the Wizard of Oz is clutching. I want the smoke and mirrors. I don’t want – particularly – to see the joints and the architraves. Miyako smells undeniably great, but it is also pretty clumsy-blocky-fingerpainty in construction. It needs more air between its molecules to feel comfortable on the skin.

I honestly don't understand the hype for this one. I've owned and loved many from this house, and I'm also a lover of vintage chypres. So this one should have been a homerun. But it came across to me as ... just nice? Uninspiring and it didn't hold my interest, despite how much I wanted it to. *shrug*

The beauty of this is that it feels totally natural. It smells like you are really smelling osmanthus and a garden of exotic fruits and flowers. But it's not overly floral in a perfumey way like, say, Arpege or Joy.

These brothers have created a perfume that utterly transports me to an exotic but unnamable tropical garden. Good on them!

I find projection, development and longevity to be very good.

Strange and wonderful. I finally made my peace with Miyako. Mostly, fragrances are about balance. In few instances does it make more difference than here. I've worn it three or four times, and each time I wondered where the topnotes were - the apricot, yuzu, peach. It always opens very equestrian on me. A big horsey leather dominates the scent on my skin. So it turns this fragrance into something other than an osmanthus fruity floral. All those notes just do background service to the leather (which they do well - osmanthus always works with leathers). Once I figured this out, everything else clicked into place. It's as if I'm smelling a different version than others are smelling, a flanker - “Miyako Equestre”.

Another interesting thing about this fragrance. Outside in cool air, the leather recedes, the fruity-florals come forward and I think at this point I'm experiencing more what others are smelling - it becomes more beautiful. It's a very solid fragrance in cold air. But it's so odd it reacts this way, being a fragrance created in a more warm, humid climate. What comes out on me in the cold is what is present for others at room temperature. And yet, because it is a strong, dense fragrance, it's not the type I'd wear outside.

So Miyako is an ambivalent wear for me. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to make it become reliable. I still like smelling it - osmanthus is such an unusual chameleon of a mud flower to me. This is one of those fragrances I can't wear, and put in a collection of other samples I love but can't wear, and bring out to smell once in a while. They each have something that really speaks to me, that I want to keep around and experience, though I can't wear them. I have a small wood box with a lid for these samples, to keep them available, so I can smell one or the other of them from time to time. It's a different level of appreciation for these beauties, so I can enjoy them on their own terms.

But as a skin art, one to live with, no.

It's good but I'm not blown away? Maybe I need to use more, but the sample is rather small.
I'll report back