The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Miguel Matos designed Young Hearts in 2019 with a concept that follows a different rhythm each time you wear it. The fragrance won the 2020 Art & Olfaction Award in the independent category. The name captures a certain spirit. Young hearts stay open to new experiences. They don't need a fragrance to smell the same way twice. They want the encounter to evolve, to adapt, to keep asking questions. This is for that person. The interplay between temperature, skin chemistry, humidity, and even the oils you use can shift how everything unfolds. It's designed to reward attention, to feel like a conversation that changes each time you meet. There's an unpredictability built into the structure that invites you back, curious to see what will happen next.
The green-chypre structure here is unusual. The forest elements, pine, fir balsam, birch, meet a chypre backbone built from oakmoss, galbanum, and amber. It gives the fragrance a timeless quality that makes people keep coming back. The most interesting material is the saffron. In most compositions, saffron reads warm and sweet. Here, Matos uses it for its cold, metallic quality, almost medicinal, like the smell of a spice cabinet in a frozen forest. It doesn't play nice with the woods. It challenges them. And that tension is what makes the fragrance feel alive.
The evolution
The opening announces itself quickly: bergamot's citrus brightness, birch's green snap, fir balsam's resinous snap. The saffron arrives early, bringing that cold, slightly metallic edge that sets the tone. This phase lasts about 30 minutes before the forest takes over. The heart is where the evergreen canopy builds. Pine and fir balsam dominate, their waxy, slightly smoky character creating density. Galbanum keeps it herbal and sharp, not sweet, not soft. The rose and jasmine appear as abstract florals, more implied than explicit, a whisper within the woods rather than a statement. The chypre structure begins asserting itself here, oakmoss and amber adding depth beneath the green. In the drydown, oakmoss takes over as the dominant note, its earthy, mossy character amplified by the resinous quality of what came before. Patchouli adds darker earthiness.
Cultural impact
Young Hearts won the Art & Olfaction Award 2020 in the independent category. It sits outside the typical green fragrance conversation, occupying a space that feels both forest-floor intimate and mysteriously elevated. The award recognized something distinctive about how the fragrance approaches its materials, rewarding the kind of unexpected interplay that distinguishes truly individual work from the broader market. Wearers who encounter it often describe a sense of discovering something rare, a fragrance that asks something of you rather than simply pleasing by default.
