l'eau d'issey

Our Beauty Director Will Never Get Tired of This Scent

She’s been wearing it since she was 14

Beauty editors see thousands of products every year—but it’s the ones they always go back to that should be noted. In Can’t Quit You, Kit beauty director Rani Sheen shares the products that she can’t live without.

For as long as I can remember caring what I smelled like, I’ve smelled like L’Eau d’Issey. I first acquired one of the tall, conical bottles the January I turned 14, a special birthday treat that I’d carefully picked out. Days later, I wore it to see a play with my friend and her family, including her impressive and impassive older brother, who casually told me: “You smell amazing.” Thus began my lifelong love affair with it.

The fragrance had launched a few years before, in 1991, created by perfumer Jacques Cavallier, but I didn’t really know what it smelled like when I got it. I was attracted by its elegant minimalist packaging, its reputation as the scent of the ‘90s, its artistic designer’s cleverly pleated clothes—it just reeked of Japanese sophistication. Once I started wearing it, I (luckily) fell deeply in love with the fresh, watery scent itself, which smelled like a lot of things but also nothing I could really pinpoint, which is still how I feel about it to this day, even though my perfume knowledge has expanded exponentially.

When I’m reminded of the original formula’s main notes: lotus, freesia, cyclamen and melon on top (melon?!), peony, lily and carnation in the heart (tuxedo buttonhole carnation?!), and cedar, sandalwood, musk and amber at the base, I’m always surprised. To me it smells soft and warm, like home, but also fresh and sparkly, like a burst of fireworks in a dew-filled country field.

l'eau d'issey
A few of Rani’s favourite L’Eau d’Issey editions from over the years

Over the years, I’ve collected its many flanker editions, which are displayed proudly in a pointy huddle in my bedroom, their many different-coloured pyramids representing the rose water and pear-sweetened take of summer 2010, the cedar-boosted Fleur de Bois version of 2010, the citrusy yuzu Lotus of 2014. It’s not a foolproof formula: I don’t much care for the jasmine-rich L’Eau d’Issey Pure from 2016, or for the vanilla-heavy Absolue of 2011, both of which for me stray too far from the original crispness. But for the most part I love being able to choose from so many different interpretations of my one true love. I always smell a little bit different so I don’t get bored, but I always feel connected to myself. As for the original, I should wear it the most since it’s the only one I’m guaranteed to be able to get my hands on in perpetuity, but I actually choose it the least, saving it for special occasions when I want to telegraph the purest version of myself. Invariably, I’ll be asked what I’m wearing, and occasionally someone tells me I smell amazing. It’s never quite as fun as that first time, but I never get tired of hearing it.

 

Issey Miyake L’Eau D’Issey Eau de Toilette (50 mL), $98, The Bay

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