Launched in 2015, Alaïa Paris is the first fragrance from designer Azzedine Alaïa.

It was inspired by his boyhood in Tunis, where he remembers water being poured over hot brick walls in the summer to cool them down and is a abstract expression of this memory.

This was the brief that Salamagne was given along with instructions that not one individual note can be identified in the fragrance, so breaking down Alaïa Paris by note is just futile. But here’s what I smell. It opens with nose-tingling aldehydes and fresh lemon. There’s a mineral, almost medicinal note slithers alongside the freshness before it gets airy and floral. I smell rose, but it’s probably the pink pepper, along with the freshness of freesia and peony. I get that indolic effect, so I know there are white flowers hidden in here. But man, is this gorgeous! And then at the base, it gets woody, warm, animalic and musky.

The drydown is a veil of irresistible seduction. An aquatic airy, skin scent balanced with enough oomph that it entrances people and draws them closer and has the same ‘how-does-he-do-that’ quality his clingy clothes have.

Alaïa Paris is an original, gorgeous fragrance – no one does aquatics like Salamagne – that enhances the Alaïa brand and I predict Alaïa Paris is going to be around a long, long time.

Notes: aldehydes, lemon, pink pepper, freesia, peony, white flowers, woods, musk.