Last month, I was lucky enough to be invited down to Adelaide to experience the launch of Issey Miyake’s latest fragrance — the iconic Le Sel d’Issey, named by the man himself, Mr Miyake.
I’m in the fortunate position to be invited to a few events of this kind — one brand or another looking to make a splash with the latest addition to its lineup — and suffice to say, some are good, some are great, but few create such an all-encompassing atmosphere as Issey Miyake did for Le Sel which, for this writer’s money, is one of the tastiest fragrances available in Australia right now.
Setting the Scene
Fragrances are all about setting the scene. Whether you’re headed to a first date, a big meeting, or just a night out with mates, a good scent allows you to put your chosen vibe out into the room, whatever that may be. When you’re launching a fragrance, setting the scene is just as important, and that’s why the brand went to great lengths to make me and their thirty other guests feel right at home on the Australian South Coast.
On arrival, the first treat awaiting us was personalised hotel rooms. Staying at Eos by SkyCity — one of the city’s most-loved and most-luxurious spots — our rooms had been carefully curated to tease everything the brand had in store for us — from personalised robes, snacks that hinted to the fragrance’s notes and, of course, a bottle of the elixir itself, every detail made it clear that we were at the beginning of a brilliantly detailed journey.
After checking in we were treated to a welcome lunch in a panoramic room overlooking sun-soaked Adelaide which confirmed these suspicions and laid out what we had in store for us… but I can’t reveal this before giving you a quick rundown of the menu: a striploin with miso ginger glaze, celeriac puree, and toasted cashews was accompanied by roast kipfler potatoes, broccolini, and cold-pressed juices. This too — drawing on the brand’s Japanese heritage but also exhibiting a decidedly wellness-oriented slant — was a clue of things to come.
With a little time spent getting to know our fellow travellers and digesting our lunch, we shortly moved on to Issey Miyake’s masterfully assembled ‘Fragrance Discover and Wellness Experience’. Broken into three distinct parts, each perfectly followed that which came before, leading us slowly but surely towards a point of total mind and bodily relaxation.
First, the (dreaded?) ice bath, back to back with a hot and steamy sauna. Designed to reflect the notion of contrasting elements that the fragrance itself embodies, this was the shock therapy I needed to get out of my head and into… a downward dog. Next up was a rooftop yoga flow, a nod to the fragrance’s balance of strength and serenity.
This was followed by an olfactory discovery, a chance to get hands on with the fragrance’s raw ingredients — Seaweed moss, ginger and, of course, salt — before rounding things out with a hard-earned salt scrub massage, as grounding and refreshing as it sounds. Then, a little downtime to scrub up for the main event: a signature dining experience to celebrate the launch of Le Sel d’Issey.
The Main Event
As we all gathered in the hotel lobby, dressed to impress, blacked-out cars rolled around the corner and whisked us away to the day’s raison d’etre: a dinner like you’ve never seen before, designed to embrace everything that Issey Miyake’s newest fragrance stands for.
Following the theme set by lunch, the menu delicately incorporated those three key ingredients — seaweed, ginger, and salt — but certainly didn’t stop there. An utterly immersive experience, the dinner also used floor-to-ceiling LED screens, an interactive touchscreen, and even a dance performance. On the screens was a hypnotic set of images created by Marcus Tomlinson, a British director and photographer, who created the images for the entire advertising campaign as well as for this launch event.
Drawing inspiration from the cymatic technology used to visualise acoustic vibrations, he filmed this enigmatic phenomenon of visual sound waves, mixing real and computer-generated images in the same sequence. In short, it was very cool and very vibey.
The fragrance itself comes 30 years after the brand’s iconic and symbolic evocation of water that revolutionised perfumery — L’Eau d’Issey pour Homme, launched in 1994). Now, Miyake once again draws inspiration from an essential element of nature: salt. A tribute to today’s new understanding of masculinity, reconnected to its senses, Le Sel d’Issey conjures up “the image of a beneficent nature that transmits to men the impetus, drive and desire to live intensely”.
The irony here is an obvious one: in nature, salt has no smell. Like an alchemist, perfumer Quentin Bisch (Givaudan) has succeeded in giving it more than just a smell: a real fragrance. Since there is no such thing as a salt extract, the perfumer has created his own personal interpretation. He explains:
“Salt is the memory of a wave on the earth and on the skin. My intention was to tackle the element salt, which responds naturally to the element water, previously interpreted by the brand, as well as the movement of nature.”
The sea, that ultimate combination of water and salt, is expressed in the extract of laminaria seaweed and oak moss, which was once a seaweed and migrated to dry land several thousand years ago; both are of natural origin. This marine focus is sublimated by the freshness of the salt accord and enhanced by a note of natural ginger sparkling with life.
The earth, on the other hand, is embodied in a natural vetiver with powerful mineral facets, cultivated for the first time in sand, as well as in cedarwood of natural origin, upcycled from wood shavings from the furniture industry. All these woody notes give the fragrance its enviable density.
The best fragrance is nothing without a great bottle, and fortunately Le Sel d’Issey has one of those too. Crafted by Japanese artist and designer Tokujin Yoshioka, who is often inspired by the phenomena of nature, this is a talent who has been collaborating with Issey Miyake for twenty years on the design of objects and flagship stores. According to him, the masculine curves of the bottle reveal the radiance of light and the energy of salt, while the elliptical shape gradually fades towards the bottom of the glass in perfect fluidity.
I won’t pretend to have the creative brilliance of those responsible for the fragrance, its bottle, or its launch event, but what I will say is this: I was gifted a bottle of Le Sel d’Issey after this event and I have scarcely gone a day without wearing it since.
The Morning After
As you might expect from an event as well stocked and atmospheric as the launch dinner, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that there were a few sore heads amongst the group the following day. Thankfully, the team had the perfect thing up their sleeve: a guided tour of the storied Morialta Falls Valley.
Providing us with a rare opportunity to see not only some of Australia’s most beautiful flora and fauna — koalas were my highlight — we were also treated to some legends about the valley, passed down through generations of Australians.
All in all, this was a one of a kind experience that didn’t just leave me with a newfound at-oneness with my body or a deepened appreciation for Australia’s infinitely varied scenery, it also graced me with an indispensable fragrance that has become my weapon of choice for any event where I want to make the best impression.