Last week I reviewed Room 1015’s Power Ballad, a fragrance inspired by memories of teenage love and rock clubs in the 1990s. I didn’t think it succeeded as an evocation of that decade, and many of you agreed with me. Ironically, although you (we) might have been listening to grunge or wearing Doc Martens and oversized flannel shirts in those days, there’s a good chance you were wearing a clean- and fresh-smelling fragrance. It might have been a body spray picked up at Bath & Body Works, or it might have been a splurge from a department store. (I personally went through several bottles of Kenzo Parfum d’Été.) It might have been Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey.

In 1992, Issey Miyake was already known for his sculptural-minimal designs, which reinterpreted traditional Japanese techniques of fabric-wrapping and origami in state-of-the-art synthetics and other unexpected materials…

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