Inspiration

If I were to see you amidst the flames,
How your face would shine.
Like the starry rain I remember,
Burning on a spring evening.
If you were to look at me in the half-light,
How I would bow my head and turn my face, and say:
"Let's leave."

Rembrandt's painting "The Night Watch",
Lee Chang-dong's film "Burning",
The poem in Huang Biyun's novel "The Death of Lu Lin",
Morita Reiko's song "Our Defeat".

In 2013, after a ten-year major renovation, the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands was fully reopened. The Dutch master perfumer FRED TABAK was invited to create a fragrance for Rembrandt's painting "The Night Watch", the museum's treasure, which was used as the fragrance for the museum's opening ceremony. The project was named "MASTER MEETS MASTER". The dialogue between the two Dutch masters across time and space uses the brush and fragrance to express the gravitational pull of light and darkness.

In 2018, the film "Burning" was released, the non-fiction novel "The Death of Lu Lin" was published, and Morita Reiko passed away. In memory of what was meant to be forgotten, "Burning" was recreated based on the fragrance of "The Night Watch".


Scent Profile

Cistus (labdanum) opens with its sticky, animalic warmth—the scent of candle wax dripping on altar stones. Frankincense swirls through the heart like church smoke, its balsamic austerity cut by cardamom's electric spice. Beneath them all, pink peppercorn's berry-like heat and clove's numbing intensity smolder like embers, while guaiac wood and ambergris (though unlisted) hum in the base—a mineralic, saline depth that feels like tears on burning skin. The result is luminous and violent: a perfume that shines like a blade in sunlight.