Therapy in a Bottle: Izu by MikMoi

I am a person who stresses easily. I am just sensitive edged. So inherently fragrance for me is usually on the peaceful side, lets be honest while I frequently admire "loud" fragrances I'm not one to usually wear them.

MikMoi earlier this year came out with a series of bath products inspired by a recent trip to Japan. The collection features three scents and the one I was most smitten with is Izu. I ended up buying a lovely little bottle of the bath and body oil. As always Mik's perfumes evoke a sense of lightness and yet have excellent tenacity and longevity.

Izu smells like neroli to me at first and yet it does not contain neroli.. Rather the combination of yuzu, ylang ylang, and green tea create the fresh plush dense tart note of neroli in the opening. Eventually the neroli quality takes a step back and what enters is the scent of ylang ylang, for lovers of ylang ylang, Izu is most definitely worth a sniff.

As I've mentioned before ylang ylang does not get enough love in my book, the scent with the most prominent note of ylang ylang that can now be easily found on the market is Chanel No.5. Unless you know what you are looking for the aldehydes of No.5 can easily cover up the ylang ylang. I'm mentioning No.5 because the ylang ylang of that scent combined with the powderiness of the other notes has always created the image for me of No.5 being the scent of the just bathed. Izu also evokes this bathing quality, yet obviously it evokes none of the formal-ness or extreme architecture of No.5. Rather Mik has highlighted the lovely sensual musky just bathed skin quality of ylang ylang in Izu.

Izu is lovely natural contemplative scent yet the sensuality of ylang ylang has not been scrubbed away. An excellent scent for those of us who have a sensitive edge

As for my tiny bottle of oil, it has excellent longevity, and plenty of sillage. I rubbed a little bit of in my palm and ran it through my hair and floated around in a lovely cloud of ylang ylang therapy all day.

Try if you if like Chanel No. 5, Smell Bent's Pepper Ylang, or the scent of Mustela.

First image from Mikmoi.com
Second image from Ctesthetic
Third image from Chen Bolan

Hanae by Keiko Mecheri

Hanae by Keiko Mecheri is meant to evoke butterflies in a Japanese garden and after testing it without first reading the notes or publicity description I must say the fragrance actually does evoke this quality. The fragrance opens with the scent of fresh lychees and cream, shockingly the rendition of lychee in this scent is good which cannot be said of most of the new debuts this year that can't seem to leave the lychee note alone and also can't get it right either. This lovely opening lasts for a minute or two before morphing into a lovely airy fluffy melange of jasmine and citrus (official notes for this part being white petals and yuzu). There is a hint of greenness in the mixture and a supporting note of nectar like sweetness. The scent thankfully does not add vanilla (and I love vanilla) which added would have created a scent over the top in sweetness. Although, wild berries are mentioned in the official notes I can honestly say I don't get any berry notes in the scent, ironically lychee is not mentioned in the official notes. The scent is fairly linear with musk providing the perfect support. Overall I do not think this scent is me, but I wouldn't hate to smell this on people. It is airy and delicate with enough oomph to have presence for the wearer.

Official Notes: White Petals, Yuzu, Wild Berries, Crystilline Musk.