The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
King of Summerisle is OM Parfum's tribute to the film The Wicker Man, one of perfumer Aichi Liu's long-standing obsessions. The fragrance traces its origins to a private commission before the house eventually made it available to a wider audience. Liu's interest in the source material runs deep enough that the composition feels less like a licensed product and more like a personal letter to a film that has clearly lived in his head for years. The result reads as a cinefile entry in the house's narrative catalogue, a chapter that takes a single piece of cinema and rebuilds it through raw material instead of image.
What's unusual here is the sheer density of the heart, a list that reads more like a perfumer's workshop inventory than a typical pyramid. Mysore sandalwood sits beside Choya Ral, a distinctive material that carries its own smoky, leathery character. Cade oil and birch tar bring the pyre. Guaiacol, the compound that gives smoked meat its savory edge, rubs shoulders with chocolate accord and roasted coffee. Castoreum adds animal warmth.
The evolution
King of Summerisle opens with a green and slightly bitter introduction, where the mandarin offers a brief lift before retreating behind heavier materials. Within minutes the top notes settle into a denser core built around Mysore sandalwood, Choya Ral, leather accord, and a stack of smoke-leaning materials including cade oil, birch tar, and guaiacol. The chocolate, caramel, and roasted coffee give the heart a roasted, almost edible warmth that anchors the composition. As the hours pass the base rises slowly, with oakmoss, frankincense, and a faint sweetness from plum and cherry threading through the residual smoke. The fragrance wears in a slow arc from the brighter opening toward a long, smoldering close, each stage carrying forward a little more weight than the last while the smoke notes remain present from first spray to final fade.
Cultural impact
King of Summerisle sits within OM Parfum's Cinefile collection, a line the house uses to translate specific films into scent. Memento Mori appears alongside it as a sibling composition within the same collection, and both share a willingness to work with incense, heavy smoke, and dense material palettes. King of Summerisle layers chocolate, whiskey, and roasted coffee into a pyre-leaning structure that reads as a continuation of the same cinematic project.
