Byredo has launched Palermo, the line's 11th fragrance:
With clacking oars the Phoenicians arrived millennia ago to found their center of ancient exchange. Under golden Roman yoke the port gained gleaming palaces and mosaics. Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Byzantines alternately wrecked and rebuilt. Moorish and Berber emirs dug irrigation and harvested new fruits – the Bergamot oranges they planted still grow. Norman kings wrested the island back from the East. Garibaldi's thousand redshirts galloped through, and Italy was born. All those centuries of interleaved layers, one bled into the other, remain palpable in the air, the water, the art, the architecture, the spirit.
Palermo was developed by perfumer Jerome Epinette; the notes include bergamot, bigarade, fresh musk, rose, skin musk and ambrette flower.
Byredo Palermo is available in 100 ml Eau de Parfum. (via byredo, additional information via stormfashion.dk)
I’ll take a dozen, please. I’m a bit worried about the bergamot, but I’ll take my chances with it if there are clacking oars involved.
LOL! I find the ad copy very amusing, but I still vastly prefer it to the smutty ads that are so prevalent these days.
We get few enough clacking oars, it is true.
Lots of bigarade going around lately.
But–no pink pepper, berries, or melon!
There are 1000s of perfumes and only so many notes to go around…
I sniffed this on paper last weekend. It was nice, but I wasn’t completely thrilled at first sniff and did not have the compulsion to try it on skin. I did have a bit of olfactory fatigue, plus was desperately trying to squirt a few last drops from the empty tester of La Tulipe onto myself, so maybe I was just distracted. I’ll give it another shot next time I visit my new home away from home, Barneys. (eek)
I really need to make another trip to Barneys. Haven’t been sniffing there in awhile. I haven’t tested much of the Byredo line although Gypsy Water is a favorite. The notes don’t make this sound all that interesting but I’ve been wrong before.
I adore La Tulipe :DDDDDD
Did you like Tulipe?
I love La Tulipe – that was my third try and I want a bottle. There is something very nostalgic about it. It conjures a sense-memory I can’t quite put my finger on, like something I may have crushed in my hand or trodden on in my Grandma and Grandpa’s garden. It has a bit of the same odd, dusky, linden-y quality I love about Naked Honey, but this is greener and more crisp.
T- I also was hit with scent memory on this one- thankfully it is not a needed addition to the collection- but I wish I could figure out what it is triggering!
Well, I’m sold. Beautiful ad copy (maybe just because I recently read the Aeneid?), beautiful notes. This is definitely on my radar, but I’ve never tried a Byredo fragrance before. Should be an adventure.
So far the only one I love is Pulp (and that one I would wear but rarely)…but there are a few I haven’t tried yet.
R- Have you tried Bal d’Afrique? I love that one and would like a bottle is it wasnt so spendy. I have sampled Pulp and liked it a lot too (made me laugh!)
Palermo- Funny I am watching The Godfather on cable (for the first time in over a decade)…notes sound hmmmm….
No, I haven’t, and I’ve heard that one is nice.
OMG I love Pulp too! Even tho’ the last twenty years of frooty stuff on the shelves made me think I couldn’t!
This company is creeping up on the radar, I was ready to write them off….groan, another nicheco fires up, you know…
I’d be bonkers for Bal Afrique and Gypsy W if they had old lady sillage, and I love Green too.
Tried this on paper a week or so ago, and as I recall I quite liked it. Not enough to make a proper lasting impression or claim a stake to skin real estate, obvs – but I liked it more than I would gather from the rather insipid list of notes. I guess they felt they had to compensate with the gleaming palaces and Berber redshirts. Er, I got that wrong.
If it did not even rank “skin real estate” status, it cannot have been very wonderful!
These notes have me salivating – can’t wait to try it!
Pulp is still a favorite…for those who know, what is as nice as Pulp?
I havent ventured into Byredo territory at all, but this has been added to the list of things to try. Definitely sounds like a summer scent.
Evocative ad copy… me likies. Better than the “the scent of two writhing bodies entwined in a timeless embrace” category of ad copy
If I ever run across this in a store, I will definitely be sniffing.
I cannot get interested on byredo frags anymore. I didn’t love any of the frags that i tried from this house. There are something on them that makes me think of frags for body products and house products. Byredo Pulp had a fruity shampoo aroma to me, byredo white was very chemical, cheap soap and product ironing. The only one that i liked was byredo green, but this one also had a soap aroma to me, old soap aroma. They seem overpriced for their quality; also don’t like the bottles, they scream cheap to me…
I *think* the bottles are changing – I remember an SA telling me this.
I like the Byredo line. Gypsy Water and Bal D’Afrique are the best of the line so far IMO and probably their best sellers too. I am sampling this one soon, I heard it was nice, but not very good lasting power. Will see
A lovely SA at Lessenteurs in London mentioned Byredo has a few new releases coming out, Palermo being the first. Then, also, expanding the line with their first deliciously moody and darker oriental incense, due out later this year/ early next year. We both agreed up ’til now their releases have all been too much along the same vein.
I guess their spin-off on oudh theme will be one og the next in line?
Byredo? Boring!!!
You know with SL doing the Kublai Khan, I reckon Byredo should do an Eric the Red type with heaps of ambergris, even the caviar accord, plenty of clacking (hmm, do oars actually clack???) oars as those Vikings landed on northern shores, apparently spreading blue eyes all over the place…
Oars clack when one of the people on the team (me) is a newbie and screws up the rhythm. Heh.
Sounds like Muscs Koublai Khan redone by Dolce & Gabbana
In which case I isuppose it would be call Light Blue Eyes?
I mean “I suppose”. I haven’t had my coffee yet.
Dark Blue Persian Eyes, I suppose. They have a dark and mysterious side, don’t forget.
Am fueled by a strange mix or nescafe (with ice cubes) and Fanta.
An equally weird but delicious combination can be achieved by replacing Fanta with Light Coke.
Then watch the scent inspiration flow!
This sounds interesting … as do most fragrances with battles or history in ad copy and names of exotic locales or figures in their names (hello Quarzazate and Koublai Khan.)
And sorry for being random, but where is the lazy weekend open poll? I just lost my ‘niche-sniffing virginity’ to the incense series and need a platform to ramble on about it
I really love Fantastic Man and I enjoyed Pulp. I did try Tulipe and I’m looking forward to trying this one. Too bad Fantastic Man is only an EDC as it doesn’t last as much as I’d like it to, but it is one of my favorites.
Smelled this also at Les Senteurs (Sensualist Geek think we had the same SA, the lovely May? I think that was the name). A fresh sweet citrus blast that I quite liked, but again not enough to have a 100ml bottle of at the price… interesting that the ad copy about Palermo’s history omitted any reference to Sicilian mafia! I guess Goths and Vandals make for better copy!
well, Palermo as a city is more about Normans and strange Germaqn origin rulers than mafia. and their food market is sensational. It’s more a city of chaos, smells and music art! Mafia is mopre present in smaller town scattered around the rest of the island.
This was love at first sniff, I first tryed it few days ago and yesterday it was mine. I was thinking if or no to “invest” 140E (recently they become more expensive, Byredo selled parfumes at 115E), and I was thrilled between choosing this one or my eternal lobe Bal D’Afrique. Obviously Palermo is at home now and I enjoy, BUT the lasting power is less than enough. Not even 3 hours, afterwards it leaves a pleasant allure of parfume, but not the real smell. Wonderfully blended, first sparkling, than sweet and “rose” oriented, I’m very pleased, but sigh! sigh! sigh! ….
Savo