Fragrance Friday: Byredo De Los Santos

For fans of the olfactory powerhouse, a new release from Byredo is always huge news. I am most definitely in that camp, and the heavenly De Los Santos, available now at MECCA, is a bright, balanced, earthy offering that has most definitely stolen my heart.
On the inspiration for De Los Santos, Ben Gorham, Byredo’s founder and creative director, has said: "Over the past year, I started to explore how different cultures approached the idea of loss in order to shift my personal perspective. I didn’t want to ‘move on’, or ‘move forward’, because that implied forgetting. Instead, I wanted to create a way to celebrate my memories, to honour the beauty of life, and to translate that into scent."

The scent was meant to encapsulate ceremonies of remembrance across cultures, like Mexico’s Día de los Muertos and All Saints’ Day, which are, in their own way, also celebrations of life. When I lived in Mexico many years ago I was lucky enough to experience Día de los Muertos in Oaxaca and Mexico City, when the streets came alive with colour, scent and music and life was literally celebrated in honour of death. Mexican traditions of mourning pay tribute to a life well-lived versus one that is finite in death, and Día de los Muertos is definitely something that needs to be experience at least once in your life.The sights and the smells absolutely blew me away, and De Los Santos has taken me right back there and then some.

The scent? It’s like an aromatic cloud of musk with a burst of sage, as well as enveloping you in amber and one of my all-time sensorial memories, incense. Used pretty much all over the world in rituals and meditations, the scent of incense evokes a sacred reverence to those who smell it, no matter their background. Raised Catholic like me, Gorham turned to sacramental scents when composing De Los Santos—hence clary sage, incense, Palo Santo. I love incense in perfume, but for some it can be a little overwhelming. Byredo, however, incorporates the note into many fragrances collection in a way that elevates each scent as a whole, rather than dominating the fragrance.
Anyway, I’m guessing you can tell Byredo De Los Santos has me obsessed. There is so much joy and so much depth to it that I just can’t get enough of, and it’s so perfect for the winter months ahead.