The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Bohemian Spirit 1979 arrived in 2017 as part of LabSolue's Aqua Adornationis collection, a lineup shaped around water in its most decorative, ornamental state. Sophie Labbé composed it around blackcurrant bud absolute, turning a raw material often used as an accent into a leading role. The name borrows a year, 1979, and a mood: the kind of free, unhurried energy that's harder to name than it is to wear. It reads as a careful walk between two registers, the laboratory's precision on one side and the unruly gesture of a garden on the other, with blackcurrant bud, peony, cashmeran, vanilla, and sandalwood threading that line throughout. There's a green, leafy current that runs underneath the floralcy, lifting the composition past pure prettiness into something more alive.
Blackcurrant bud absolute carries a catty, green intensity, sharp and resinous in equal measure. Sophie Labbé leans into it rather than rounding it off. The bud opens the perfume with a burst that reads almost like crushed leaves and stems, all sap and snap, before the peony settles in and softens the edges with its cool, watery hush. It's a structure built on contrast: sharp green against hushed petal, dew against wood. The interplay between the bud's astringency and the peony's cooler floralcy creates a tension that keeps the opening from ever settling into something predictable.
The evolution
The first ten minutes are the loudest they'll get. Blackcurrant bud pushes forward with a green, almost herbaceous snap, joined by a faint fizzy quality that reads like the air just after rain, bright and slightly charged. Peony arrives within minutes, and the composition turns cooler, more transparent, the kind of scent that feels like it came in through an open window. There's a quiet sweetness underneath that never announces itself outright, more a suggestion of something ripe, a distant fruit note rather than anything jammy or loud. The green and the floral sit side by side through the first hour, neither dominating, each keeping the other honest. By the two-hour mark, the green has softened into something creamier. Cashmeran takes over from the peony, lending that warm, slightly woody-musky haze that makes everything feel close to skin.
Cultural impact
It wears with the kind of effortlessness that appeals to people who treat florals as a default rather than a statement. The composition keeps its green, slightly sharp edge from the blackcurrant bud present throughout, refusing to collapse into pure sweetness, and that tension is part of what makes it memorable. Wearers tend to reach for it in warmer months, when the cool, watery side of the peony has room to breathe, but it transitions easily into transitional weather too, its drydown's woody-musky warmth giving it more weight than a straightforward spring floral.
