The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Fig Fiction arrived as a fig fragrance, a category that's narrative by default. The fruit carries centuries of symbolic weight, from Eden to Mediterranean summers, and any bottle built around it has to negotiate that inheritance. What And Other Stories did was call on Jérôme Epinette, a perfumer working through Robertet, to shape Fig Fiction's particular register. The collaboration produced a composition that takes the cultural freight of fig and treats it with a light touch, refusing to lean on the fruit's associations while still letting them breathe underneath the green, papery surface. The result reads as confident without being loud, the kind of bottle that earns its place through clarity of intention rather than noise.
Epinette's skill is restraint. Rather than building a fig fragrance as an obvious fig statement, he layered in blackcurrant and pink pepper for a tart edge that keeps the fruit from tipping into jam territory. The bamboo note is unusual in fig compositions, lending the cool, papery green quality that makes the scent read fresh on skin even hours in. Violet adds the soft-focus cream that rounds the sharp edges without flattening them. The base pulls toward Brazilian rosewood and plum rather than the usual fig-leaf-and-coconut route, giving the drydown a warmer, almost woody-fruity finish that feels grounded rather than gourmand.
The evolution
The first fifteen minutes are the sharpest part of the ride. Lemon and pink pepper arrive almost simultaneously, slicing through the blackcurrant's jammy sweetness and setting up a green, slightly metallic brightness that smells more like crushed stems than fruit. The fig begins to show itself as the opening settles, but only in pieces: first the cool, watery green of a freshly snapped leaf, then a slow build toward something riper and creamier as violet enters the mix. Bamboo keeps the heart from ever feeling overtly sweet. It reads like clean air trapped inside the composition, papery and cool in a way that pulls the fruit away from any jam-jar associations. As the hours pass, the composition shifts again. The sharp citrus is long gone, replaced by a quiet warmth where plum and Brazilian rosewood take over.
Cultural impact
Fig Fiction became one of those quiet discoveries, the kind of bottle people hand to friends without ceremony. It sits comfortably alongside better-known fig compositions like Diptyque's Philosykos as an accessible, everyday alternative that brings the category to a wider audience. Its appeal was always the wearability: a fig scent that translates well across seasons and occasions, that handles both a commute and an evening out without requiring the wearer to commit to a particular mood. The bottle has built a following through recommendation rather than campaign, finding its audience one wearer at a time.
