The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Shade 1 is part of Gissah's Shades of Love trilogy, a three-piece collection the house released in 2023. Where most fragrance lines stretch a concept across a catalogue of fifteen or twenty, Gissah worked with a smaller frame. Three shades, three perfumes, one shared name. Shade 1 opens with bergamot and pear, two notes that do very little on their own without context, then lets white flowers, freesia and iris carry the middle before the base settles into sandalwood, vanilla and musk. The pear reads green rather than syrupy, almost like biting into the fruit before it has fully ripened, and the bergamot behind it gives a clean brightness that fades within the first half hour.
Iris is the structural choice here, and it's the one that earns the composition its personality. Pairing iris against vanilla and sandalwood pulls it toward warmth without losing the powdery edge that makes iris recognizable. The pear at the top isn't there for fruitiness, it's there for lift, a delicate green sweetness that prevents the iris from collapsing into full chalk. And the white florals, rather than competing with the iris, act as a bridge, softening the transition into the woody base.
The evolution
On skin, Shade 1 opens with a quick, clean wash of bergamot and pear, the kind of bright top that lasts maybe twenty minutes before it hands the floor over. The freesia shows up first, light and almost green, then the iris takes hold, and this is where the fragrance finds its real character: cool, powdery, but never cold. There's a creaminess underneath the iris that arrives earlier than expected, the sandalwood and vanilla beginning to surface within the first hour rather than waiting for the drydown. By the two-hour mark, the white florals have largely faded and the iris is sitting on a bed of soft wood and musk. The vanilla here isn't gourmand; it reads more like warmth, like the smell of skin at the end of a long day.
Cultural impact
Shade 1 functions as the lightest of the three perfumes in Gissah's Shades of Love trilogy, and the iris-vanilla-sandalwood combination gives it a softness that sets it apart from heavier compositions. Within the trilogy it reads as the daytime piece, the one that suits warmer months and quieter settings. The choice to anchor the composition on iris rather than a more common floral like rose or jasmine gives it a distinctive character, and the green pear opening adds a freshness that keeps the fragrance from feeling weighed down by its base.
