The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Late Lunch arrived as a collaboration with Casa Jondal, the restaurant and small boutique located on the beach of the same name, and launched exclusively through Byredo's pop-up boutique there. The way to reach that section of beach involves dining at the restaurant, which folds the whole experience into a single afternoon rather than separating purchase from place. Nicolas Bonneville composed the formula to bottle the island's long, sun-pulled afternoons, the ones where lunch drifts past three o'clock and the only plan is to stay. The citrus and salt weren't chosen for novelty. They were chosen because that's what the air actually smells like on that beach when the sea breeze moves through.
Galbanum in a Mediterranean composition brings a green, almost bitter edge that gives Late Lunch its particular tension. It keeps the scent from collapsing into something too easy, too crowd-pleasing, too close to the suntan lotion shelf. Mastic adds a resinous quality rooted in the lentisque that grows across the island, while pink pepper and rosemary do the aromatic heavy lifting. Salt is the structural surprise. It reads as mineral rather than oceanic brine, grounding the fragrance in something tactile and earthen.
The evolution
The first ten minutes belong to the citrus. Lemon and mandarin arrive bright, almost sharp, with orange blossom threading a soft floral ribbon underneath. It's the most extroverted phase, the one that announces the fragrance as something approachable and clean. Then the transition happens. Galbanum cuts in with its green, peppery bitterness, and the mastic starts pushing warm resin notes through the composition. Salt arrives not as a literal ocean note but as a mineral texture, a dryness that feels like limestone under afternoon sun. Pink pepper sharpens everything at the edges, giving the heart a subtle bite that keeps it from going soft. Rosemary threads through everything, keeping the aromatic freshness alive while the base builds. The drydown is where this earns its complexity.
Cultural impact
Late Lunch launched through Casa Jondal, the restaurant and small boutique on the beach of the same name, accessible to those dining at the restaurant. That exclusivity turned the launch into an experience rather than a standard release, folding fragrance into the rhythm of a meal, an afternoon, a place. For a composition where longevity is noted as above-average, the restricted availability shapes how the fragrance has been encountered: less as a mass-market release and more as a souvenir of a specific coastal moment.
