The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
The Witch dropped in 2024 as part of IM:SOLE's second season, and the name sets the agenda before the first spritz. Tipsy. Charming. Mysterious. The house's own campaign line frames it as "release desire falling into flowers," which reads less like witchcraft and more like the moment a room tilts a few degrees in your direction. The Witch arrives as a slightly intoxicated archetype, the one who loosened a button before walking in. The composition borrows its tilt from two traditions at once. The bright berry-grape opening feels plucked from a fruit-stall fantasy, with red berries and grape crackling alongside a citrus lift that keeps the sweetness from going syrupy. Then the base swings it toward something darker and more deliberate.
What makes The Witch structurally interesting is the collision between grape and oak. Grape rarely survives into a base this woody. Most fruity openings vanish by the heart phase, leaving behind only the ghosts of what they were. Here, the sweetness is anchored by guaiac wood and oak before cognac arrives to amplify the boozy undertone, giving the fruit something to drape over instead of dissolving into air. The woods don't smother the grape, they hold it in place, a little like a frame around a painting that would otherwise slide off the wall.
The evolution
The first ten minutes are pure provocation. Red berries and grapes crack open bright, almost jammy, with citrus pulling the sweetness sideways into something less guilty. The fruit is loud. No apologies. The jamminess coats the air around you in a way that feels deliberate, a sweet declaration before the herbal heart has anything to say. By the thirty-minute mark, the rose arrives with a green herbal blade, sage and artemisia holding it upright so nothing collapses into sugar. This is where The Witch earns its name, the mood shifts, gets a little more knowing, a little less polite. The drydown is where it gets serious. Oak, cedar, guaiac wood, and cognac settle in for a long stay, warm and dry, with the grape still humming underneath like a secret.
Cultural impact
The Witch arrives at a moment when fruit-woody combinations are gaining traction among independent fragrance houses, compositions that refuse to commit fully to either sweetness or smoke. Cognac as a base note has become something of a quiet signature in this space, giving fruity openings a place to land without flattening them into pure gourmand territory. Rose continues to show up in unexpected contexts, threaded through boozy compositions and herbal hearts rather than reserved for traditional florals.
