About This Scent
- Notes
- Lotus, Rosa
- Brand
- Issey Miyake
Presentation is half of what you pay for with any boxed set, and the L'Eau d'Issey Gift Set, from Issey Miyake, is bought by people who want the giving part handled as well as the fragrance.
Inside are the 100ml Eau de Toilette, a 50ml body lotion and a 10ml spray. The scent is the long established one. Two materials are recorded for it, lotus and rose, and the lotus is what people actually remember. It is a watery, green, slightly cool material that smells of clean air and rinsed stone more than of petals, and it was unusual enough when the fragrance arrived that it changed what a mainstream floral could smell like. Three decades later it is still immediately identifiable.
Rose does the quieter job. It gives the composition warmth and a soft floral weight underneath the clarity, which is what keeps it from reading as merely fresh laundry. The two together make a short, simple scent, and in this case simplicity is a virtue: it is easy to wear, easy to receive and unlikely to be wrong for anyone.
Sets like this are worth buying when the occasion needs to look considered. Christmas, a birthday, a thank you after someone has put you up for a weekend. It is aimed at women, it suits spring and summer best of all, and it is light enough for daily wear rather than being saved for occasions, which makes it a present that actually gets used. Few presents in this price bracket are as reliably well received, and fewer still get used up rather than shelved.
The name belongs to a Japanese design company working out of Shibuya in Tokyo. Miyake Design Studio was founded in 1970 and the firm incorporated in 1971, with a first store opening in Tokyo in 1974. Famous for pleated, experimentally constructed clothing, the house began making perfume in March 1992.
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