I grew up with wood smoke, mountains, and wilderness. In the winter our coats smelled of wood smoke and for me that is the ultimate evocation of the colder seasons. If you can also evoke the scent of damp chilly woods even better.
The books I loved the most when I was younger were fantasies with heavy fairy tale/ folk lore elements. I adored the dark primal qualities they had with hints of the sinister and the mystical. These qualities I am describing are not easily found in perfumes. Perfumes usually go with other story lines, the uber-sensual taking up most conversation, yet if you enter the sphere of indie/niche perfumes you find that sometimes a perfumer goes down less known path.
Konig by Yosh is a perfume that goes down a different path. It is a scent that evokes the images of forests at the cusp of before turning into winter. The cold rains of Autumn have come already, there is barely a bedraggled leaf on a tree and only the oldest overly ripe moldering fruit is left on the branch. There are mists at the edge of each day. Yosh has created the dark fairy tale country in Konig.
The scent begins with the lightest note of Autumn, a beautiful fleeting apple note. From there the perpetual scent of smoke, woods, and leather enter. Here I am reminded of lapsang souchong tea that has been mixed with cold woods. As the wood smoke calms down on the skin what emerges is the tangy note of vetiver, it smooths out the leather and smoke. Yosh creates perfect balancing act with the use of vetiver, it keeps the leather and smoke smooth and reigned in. Eventually the evergreen notes of the scent are allowed to emerge, they are natural and subtle. Konig is a wearable dark fairy tale.
Try Yosh's Konig if you like Ormonde Jayne Woman, Guerlain's Vetiver, or Knize Ten.
image Greg Shield
