If you’ve lived on either coast of the US, you have a boardwalk somewhere near you. Situated at the top of a strand of beach it has souvenir shops, arcades, and food places on one side. The beach and the ocean on the other side. I have spent many a summer day walking the boardwalk with a snow-cone, ice cream cone, or some other sweet confection in my hand as the sun shone overhead. I hadn’t thought a lot about it, but this is an ideal milieu for the current trend of transparent floral gourmands. It looks like Byredo Sundazed is going to tread the boards first.
Ben Gorham
When I received my sample and press materials this seemed like a brand who would know just what to do with a concept like this. Creative director Ben Gorham and perfumer Jerome Epinette have spent the last twelve years defining the Byredo minimalistic aesthetic. Over the past few releases a higher level of transparency has also begun to incorporate itself into the brand identity. For Sundazed it is that endless summer on a boardwalk they are attempting to capture.
Jerome Epinette
It is a simple set of accords. On top is the sunshine as represented by citrus. M. Epinette uses primarily lemon given some juicy sweetness with mandarin. The lemon is that sun in a clear blue sky. The mandarin is the set-up for the sweet to follow. That comes in a heart accord of jasmine and neroli. The neroli picks up on the citrus in the top while the jasmine provides the bulk of the flower sweetness. What is also nice about this heart accord is the very subtle presence of the natural indoles present in the flowers. They give that tiny nod to sweaty skin. Then we get to the base where cotton candy is paired with white musks. Ethyl maltol is the usual ingredient to give the cotton candy effect. I’m not sure if M. Epinette is not using some new analog here because it doesn’t carry the heaviness ethyl maltol usually does. Whatever the source of the cotton candy some of the white musks expand it into an airy effect of gentle sweetness instead of sugar crystals crunching between your teeth. The other white musks give that sun-tanned skin effect.
Sundazed has 10-12 hour longevity and average sillage.
Sundazed is one of the first of the transparent floral gourmands to really engage me. I’ve thought Byredo could excel in this type of fragrance. With a mid-summer trip to the boardwalk Sundazed shows I was correct.
Disclosure: this review is based on a sample provided by Byredo.
–Mark Behnke
