Yohji Homme
Yohji Yamamoto (1999)

Coffee, anise, and lavender, compressed and polished into a glassine unity. The notes are recognizable but also transformed. Usually earthy and sometimes even rough, they are no such thing here. Urban, sleek, minimalist. The smell can be elusive up close, but in the air it drifts up in subtle ribbons, as if the molecules are strings that gradually lift off the skin until they untether and float into the atmosphere.

I’m thrilled to report that I’ve scored a unicorn: an unsprayed, 100-ml bottle of OG Yohji Homme. Launched in 1999 by Japanese fashion house Yohji Yamamoto, when its fragrances were still under the Jean Patou label, it was designed by nose Jean-Michel Duriez, probably with support from legendary Patou in-house perfumer Jean Kerleo. Yohji Homme attained mythical status and a cult following in the early 2000s, later cemented by Luca Turin’s rave, five-star review in his first Guide with Tania Sanchez (2008).

Honestly, the juice is pretty freaking incredible. I haven’t been able to stop sniffing it since I got it a few days ago (I’ve worn it twice at night, once for a formal dinner and once before bedtime). Today’s my first full-day run with it. It has a complex, three-part structure consisting of 1) an anisic fougère that lightly treads on 2) gourmand territory and ends on 3) a dark, chypre-like base. The first time I smelled the opening it reminded me distantly of Davidoff Zino and Azzaro Pour Homme — the former, due to the lavender-rosewood; the latter, because of the lavender-anise. But all reminiscences end immediately, as Yohji begins to unfurl its secrets and take an utterly unique path toward an unexpected destination.

After the initial aromatic burst featuring bergamot, lavender, anise, and coriander, it gains in depth and warmth with cinnamon, a more prominent rosewood, and a delicious licorice accord that functions as the pivot to transition from fougère to gourmand. I can discern geranium (or is it carnation?), but whatever florals are present are subtle and quickly subsumed by the irruption of its base protagonists, the real stars of the show: a boozy rum that takes you for a spin, a rich coffee that provides sturdy comfort (and prevents a hangover) and a fine grain, worn-in, brown leather that is only slightly sweetened by high-quality tonka beans and a creamy sandalwood. Heaven.

Yohji Homme was a pioneer and is the perfect gourmand for those of us who don’t usually like gourmands. It’s merely gestural in this regard, in no way evoking anything truly edible. Rum and coffee: two of the best aromas in the world, especially to someone from Guatemala, like me. I have now found my holiday season holy grail: light, fresh, spicy, warm, boozy, semisweet, suave, inviting, and effortlessly interesting. No wonder it’s a legend.

Starts off like a light, musky, citrusy clean 80s or 90s masculine scent. The nuttiness of the anise-licorice and mocha comes in next. That seems to be the real heart and soul of this scent. It continues on that way but later a musty leather kicks in and pushes this into a mature territory that's older than what I'd like to smell like.

Doesn't project but you can smell it on your clothes or skin when you get close and longevity lasts all day.

In an alternate world, Yohji Homme could have been a brilliant Fougère. Substitute licorice for lavender, rum & coffee for coumarin and patchouli and musk for oak moss. A counterintuitive bone structure for an entire olfactive genre, but so is a classical fougere(or Chypre for that matter), if you really stop to think about it.

What I mean is, this scent is a titan and could have easily been as big a hit as something like A*men, which rightly has 23,000(and counting) flankers and more imitators, given the right circumstance.

It's sad that the Patou version is disappearing. People are using their bottles and even now the top notes on my bottle are starting to disperse. But this ephemeral nature only makes me love it more. Wear it while you still can!

It's as if one took a particularly statuesque model and recast its overall form as a mannequin. Make no mistake, I mean this as the highest compliment to the nose behind this classic. Its charms are syncretic and it stands as a unique innovation on a tried-and-true genre.

It has the soul of a fougere, but with these
delectable, unnaturally potent boozy-gourmand notes added in. (I, for one, almost always love seeing anise notes but respect that they are a polarizing, acquired taste)

The finishing white musk is just as freakish (& gorgeous because of it) as the gourmand element though of course it is incorporated seamlessly. To pursue my earlier comparison,
the bones of the drydown are about what you expect but transmuted just enough to keep things thrilling.

The scent balances the line between familiarity and novelty perfectly and its position makes this uncanny scent one I love revisiting.

Timeless.

Yohji Homme by Yohji Yamamoto (1999) came at a time when the gourmand was just starting to pick up steam on the men's side of the fragrance spectrum, and as one of the final products of legendary perfumer Jean Kerleo before he left Patou (who created Yohji Yamamoto's scents at first), this gets a big push by collectors and enthusiasts. It's an unlikely hero to the fans of Kerleo to be fair, as most of his past masculine scent work seemed to be arguably more traditional in construction, or at least built upon tradition. Yohji Homme was frankly as much the opposite of traditional men's perfumery as one might get in 1999, even compared to the citric ozonics and aquatics of the day. Yohji Homme as the male counterpart to Yohji (1996), a feminine gourmand that also can be labelled unisex in some ways, didn't seem to take a hard-line stance on it's own gender assignment, which is perhaps part of it's appeal. We were in a new age of deliberately-marketed unisex perfume thanks to the success of Calvin Klein's cK1 (1994), but both Yohji scents made by Kerleo could be enjoyed interchangeably by either sex despite who they were "meant for", as I see quite a few men sing praises about the perfume plus vice-versa with women and this. It should also be of important note that this was touched up by perfumer Olivier Pescheux to meet IFRA standards after Patou gave up the license and Yohji Yamamoto relaunched these on his own in 2012 (only to see them discontinued one more final time a few years later).

Yohji Homme opens with bergamot, sage, juniper berry, cinnamon, cardamom, and a very famous licorice note. Some folks cite lavender as being in this, but I can't really detect it myself amidst all the spice and herbs. The middle is quite boozy with a rum note that then later hands you coffee for the hangover it will give you, and geranium lingers in the background before it all dries in a bootstrap type of leather, with soft musk and patchouli keeping it warm and sensual. Cedar is the final detectable note here, and it's another drying counterpoint, keeping the musk and rum from being cloying. It's a much better-balanced and blended gourmand than many later ones created in it's wake, particularly more commercial ones like Spark by Liz Claiborne (2003) or Bod Man Body Heat by Parfums de Coeur (2007) that both go strait for sweet and warm with no mercy. Yohji Homme instead plays off it's own mystique, being sweet at times, then dry and earthy, seductive with it's warmth but also light enough on it's feet for diplomacy in an office setting. It's far from a generalist scent but it has enough angles to do more than smell pretty, no pun intended. I feel this deliberately acts like a tease on skin, making you satisfied with the first impression, but also contemplating what it would do if you got closer to the person wearing it; the stuff walks that fine knife's edge between casual and romantic. Wear time is about 7 hours, so just below average, but sillage is well detectable throughout that time. Best use is spring through fall in cozy scenarios.

Yohji Homme's cedar and fairly heavy synthetic white musk note interplay also recalls Jõvan Ginseng N.R.G. (1998) even if they are worlds apart in construction otherwise, plus Avon would seemingly take a stab at Yohji Homme with a gourmand/fougère hybrid called Intrigue (2001), replacing some notes with barbershop staples and going both way darker/drier and more clearly defined as masculine, removig much of the charming subtlety of the idea Kerleo presents here. Yohji is a fine scent, and is quite literally the perfect gourmand for somebody who doesn't -really- want that typical gourmand feel of coming across as baked goods or a fruit basket when wearing it. I'd say this is one of the better blended, sophisticated, and balanced scents not only of it's genre, but of it's decade, standing apart from all the mega-linear "ocean in a bottle" scents that were littering the fragrance counters in the late 90's, being a close rival to Rochas Man (1999) in that regard. It's not for every person, but Yohji is a fascinating showcase of bright spice, dry woods and leather wrapped in soft musk that will keep you sniffing. So far as I can tell no aesthetic changes were intentionally made by Pescheux when he adjusted Kerleo's original formula, since there is little talk of difference between them from fans, so any version will do. Try a mini-sized tube before you spend a vast sum for a full bottle, which is comically also a tube, just much larger. Thumbs up