For the great majority of the time being in the US gives me the opportunity to try things first. In the perfumed world though that isn’t always the case and often there are releases that take over a year to find their way to America. Usually patience wins the day except in the case of the few lines I like very much which haven’t found their way across the pond, yet. Very top of that list is Memo Paris. For a few years I used a Paris shopping service to get my bottles back to me then I found that Colette, the French Department Store, had worldwide shipping. Over time I have struck up a relationship with John Molloy who is the husband of Creative Director, and co-owner, Clara Molloy. When I was in Milan for the most recent Esxence I had the opportunity to meet with Mme Molloy about their newest release Kedu which is part of the new Graines Vagabondes series, inspired by seeds.
John and Clara Molloy
When we began to talk about Kedu, Mme Molloy handed me a coffee table book with the Middle-Earth-like name of Borobudur on it. It didn’t turn out to be the long lost home of the dwarves but instead one of the great Buddhist temples located in Central Java, Indonesia. It is the largest Buddhist temple in the world and a pilgrimage site for Buddhists on the holiday of Waisak, more prosaically known as Buddha’s Birthday. As an act of purification you burn one sesame seed for every passion, I would hold up the line if I did this. What is unique is on Waisak the smell of burning sesame arises all around the area. This is what Mme Molloy wanted to capture with Kedu and she asked her longtime collaborator, perfumer Alienor Massenet, to compose the fragrance around a central note of sesame.
Borobudur in the Mist
One of the special joys of my meeting with Mme Molloy was she offered me the opportunity to smell the three linchpin notes for the top, heart, and base of Kedu. On top was a grapefruit oil which was as bright a grapefruit as I have ever smelled without a hint of the sour or sulfurous facets sometimes present. The base note was a white musk which was silky smooth without the screechy irritating quality some white musks have for me. Those I had smelled versions of before. The sesame absolute was something new for me and it was absolutely glorious. This was a flame kissed seed with all the rich viscosity of a sesame oil. I spent most of the evening returning to the strip to experience it over and over. At this point I couldn’t wait to see how Mme Massenet put this all together.
Alienor Massenet
If I hadn’t smelled the building blocks before trying Kedu I would have said it was a typical grapefruit opening complete with the sour and sulfurous facets, but I knew that wasn’t true. Mme Massenet lets the sesame absolute substitute for those facets. Once I tuned into that I realized this was a very different grapefruit accord as instead of sulfurous it was really sort of toasted and instead of sour it was slightly piquant; both of those courtesy of the sesame. A slight floral interlude courtesy of rose and peony set the transition to the heart of where the sesame truly takes center stage. On a strip it was great, on my skin it was better. It lingers at this stage long enough for my own personal passions to take their time burning away. When the sesame does dissipate what is left is the very smooth white musk with a bit of moss thrown in for texture.
Kedu has 6-8 hour longevity and modest sillage.
The sesame absolute has also shown up in two other of my recent favorite fragrances, Arquiste Anima Dulcis and Etat Libre D’Orange La Fin du Monde, but it is not as prominent as it is in Kedu. Kedu allows me to revel in the swirling smoke of the immolating sesame seeds and it is an exciting beginning to the Graines Vagabondes series. I am really hoping that caraway is one of the seeds on the drawing board because I would really like to see what the Memo team would do with that. I do know that if I find myself at Borobodur during Waisak there will be one seed named Memo Paris that I feed to the fire. Kedu is another passionate entry in the Memo Paris catalogue.
Disclosure: this review was based on a press sample provided by Memo Paris and Campomarzio 70.
–Mark Behnke
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