Japanese Peacock

Cinematically speaking, Oyédo by the Parisian fragrance house, Diptyque, is a Technicolor citrus, all chartreuse greens and warm chrome yellows. Ostensibly Japanese in flavor, it succeeds more in a vein of sheer Oriental weirdness – as if Rei Kawakubo had commissioned it, not Desmond Knox-Leet and Yves Coueslant.

To my nose, it doesn’t scream fruit as much as something artificial, like a new plastic shower curtain liner, a grape-flavored Jolly Rancher sans the high-fructose corn syrup, or - and, for most people, this is the monkey wrench in the gears - something that approximates analgesic rub. (But if James Heeley can do it in Esprit du Tigre, then I guess the folks at Diptyque can too.)

Which is not to say that Oyédo won’t appeal to people – Quite the contrary, I think it fills a very real need for wintertime citruses that don’t evaporate in twenty seconds time and that parry notes other than bergamot and lemon zest. It embodies the paradox of something cool-smelling succeeding in a world of ice and snow, as if its notes mimicked the chilled air.

Heard a peacock lately?