The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Tempo arrived in 2025 from Kintsugi Perfumes, composed by perfumer Martin Švach. The name means rhythm, and the brief reads like a training plan: set your own pace, find strength in your rhythm, keep moving toward the answers you're looking for. Tempo was made in collaboration with the Love them Running Club, bringing a clear sense of movement to the project. The top notes bring together bay leaf and bergamot, with cardamom adding warmth as fig contributes a green, soft quality on the tongue. Together, they create an opening that feels bright, leafy, and subtly spiced.
What makes Tempo interesting is the handoff between green and heat. Bay leaf carries an almost savory bitterness that sits next to citrus without making the opening overtly sweet, while cardamom adds clean heat rather than fire. Fig brings a rounded, green softness to the composition. Then neroli and sage introduce white floral softness beside a cool herbal edge, with hinoki cypress standing vertical through the middle. It's a fresh composition with clear structure, moving from citrus and leaves into warm spice, floral air, and a clean woody line.
The evolution
The opening moves fast. Bergamot and mandarin orange flash bright, bay leaf drops a green snap underneath, and fig rounds it off with something milky and almost savory. Cardamom warms the middle without tipping into sweetness, creating a lively contrast between cool citrus, green leaves, and gentle spice. Then the composition settles into neroli, ginger, and sage, with hinoki cypress giving the whole thing a clean, woody vertical. What surprises is how much warmth remains underneath the green. Ginger keeps ticking along. The base notes include sandalwood and musk, both smooth and close, while frankincense adds a faint resinous haze. As the fragrance develops, the opening brightness gives way to a softer combination of warm spice, herbal notes, floral softness, clean wood, smooth skin tones, and resin.
Cultural impact
Tempo is a fragrance for women and men, created by Kintsugi Perfumes in collaboration with the Love them Running Club. That partnership gives the project a clear connection to running and the repeated rhythms of personal practice. The fragrance brief asks you to set your own pace, find strength in your rhythm, and keep moving toward the answers you're looking for. Scented citrus, bay leaf, cardamom, fig, neroli, ginger, sage, hinoki cypress, sandalwood, musk, and frankincense give that rhythmic brief a tactile expression, opening brightly before settling into herbal, woody, and resinous notes.
The House
Kintsugi PerfumesKintsugi Perfumes is an independent fragrance house founded in 2021 by Daniel Nikolov and Martin Švach. The brand draws its name and ethos from kintsugi, the centuries-old Japanese practice of repairing broken ceramics with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. Rather than concealing damage, the art form treats fractures as part of an object's history, highlighting them as marks of resilience and transformation. This philosophy shapes how the founders approach scent creation, viewing each fragrance as an opportunity to capture moments of beauty that emerge from imperfection and renewal. The house produces perfumes inspired by Eastern philosophical concepts and Japanese cultural motifs, with collections that include fragrances named after historical figures, mythical beings, and abstract emotional states.
The Creator
Martin ŠvachŠvach gravitates toward fresh, naturalistic compositions with clear structural logic. The Kingdom Come fragrance demonstrates his comfort with bright top notes, specifically apple, balanced against herbaceous undertones that ground the freshness without dulling it.
