Mixed Emotions.

Byredo has always worked in the space between memory and abstraction. Ben Gorham, the founder, doesn't brief perfumers with note lists, he briefs them with feelings. For Mixed Emotions, the brief was the contemporary condition: that churn of being online and offline simultaneously, of knowing too much and feeling too little, of wanting stillness and movement at the same time. The fragrance arrived in 2021, which feels like the exact moment such a scent became necessary. Blackcurrant and mate open the conversation, immediately setting up the duality, one sweet, one bitter, neither apologizing for what it is.

The unusual part isn't any single ingredient, it's how they relate. Mate is herbal, almost medicinal, with a slight bitterness that most perfumers avoid. Here it sits alongside blackcurrant's jammy sweetness, and the two don't cancel out. They argue. That's intentional. The tea and violet leaf in the heart add a green, ozonic quality that could feel medicinal too, but the smoky birch and papyrus in the base anchor the whole thing in something earthier, older. Papyrus especially gives it a papery dryness that keeps the sweetness from ever becoming soft.

Mixed Emotions opens sharp and split, blackcurrant's fruit against mate's bitter herbs, smoke lurking underneath both. Fifteen minutes in, the black tea arrives, and with it a softer, greener dimension: violet leaf pulling the composition toward something more familiar. The sweet-sour tension doesn't disappear; it evolves. By hour three or four, the woody base takes over. Birch adds a papery, slightly smoky quality. Papyrus keeps things earthy, mineral, even a little dry. On skin, the drydown lasts into evening, intimate but present. On fabric, it holds even longer. The papyrus note especially seems to outlive the rest, lingering into the next day as a quiet trace.

Mixed Emotions arrived at a moment when the idea of emotional complexity became culturally resonant. The fragrance doesn't smell like nostalgia or comfort, it smells like the mixed feelings themselves. Wearers describe it as moody, evocative of stormy skies, with an addictive contrast between jammy sweetness and smoke. It's polarizing: some find it medicinal, others find it unlike anything else. What everyone agrees on is that it doesn't smell like anything else in Byredo's lineup.