How to read Mosaïque: plum, honey and cocoa

In its Notes section the brand lists the composition in three tiers. It describes the scent rather than revealing the formula.

The ten notes of Mosaïque read like a menu for two, but they won't give away the formula, and the most interesting thing about them is the one that isn't on the list.

I read the notes of Mosaïque in the evening with a glass of red, and the list reminds me of the menu at a small restaurant where people go as couples. At the top there is yellow mandarin, clary sage and plum. The heart holds ylang-ylang, tobacco, patchouli and honey, and the base has maté, roasted cocoa and oakmoss. Ten words, and each of them already promises something, although I haven't yet brought the scent itself to my face.

What the brand says

27 87 describes Mosaïque in a single sentence, and I like it more than the whole list. It speaks of cold, smoky air woven through with the mystical sweetness of honey, plum and ylang-ylang, set against clean roasted cocoa, leather and oakmoss. Then the brand calls the scent a mosaic of ancient traditions and contemporary tribal rhythms, and by then I'm smiling, because you could say that about almost any evening that went well, the kind with wine and talk until two in the morning.

Notice that leather is in that sentence but not in the list of notes. I don't know where it comes from, the tobacco, the moss or the way cocoa meets honey, and the brand doesn't say a word about it.

What the list won't tell you

The notes don't say how much honey there is in the perfume or how much moss. Nor will they tell you what will be left by midnight on warm skin under the collar of your jumper. On the brand's page the ingredients look nothing like the notes: alcohol, water, the single word Parfum and a short list of substances such as coumarin, eugenol and linalool. Not one of them is called plum.

The brand writes the notes in words while the formula stays with the perfumer, and I rather like that. After all, I also like not knowing everything about someone after the first evening.

How I read a list like this

I read them in pairs. Plum and honey promise a slow, sticky sweetness, while cocoa and oakmoss promise bitterness and shade. Between them sits the tobacco, which could turn out to be a dry leaf or a warm jacket someone left on the back of a chair. The rest is up to your skin, so put the scent on your wrist, don't rush to a verdict, and in the evening, when nothing is left of the mandarin but a memory, bury your nose in your collar and you will learn more than any list could tell you.