The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Burning It All arrived in 2025 as part of Pleuvoir's White Collection. Perfumer Maxime Exler, working with MANE, shaped a composition that leans into a charged, heat-bearing register. The title does what it says: this is a fragrance built around the act of ignition, the moment before smoke clears. What unfolds on skin is an exercise in controlled combustion. The opening throws everything forward at once, three pepper expressions colliding with frankincense smoke, each demanding attention before the composition finds its footing. There's nothing tentative here, no polite introduction. You get heat, resin, and spice in the first breath, and the fragrance dares you to keep up.
What separates this from the crowd of generic spicy masculines is the pepper stacking. Three distinct expressions meet at the top, black pepper's dry heat, Sichuan pepper's electric lift, and frankincense's resinous contribution, creating a layered spice architecture rather than a single hot note. Each component retains its own character even as they merge, the way three voices in harmony still carry distinct timbres. Then the heart introduces an unusual vegetal: green bell pepper, split open and bright, alongside pimento leaf and iris. That vegetal-iris pairing is the move nobody expects.
The evolution
The opening is confrontational. Black pepper, Sichuan pepper, and frankincense throw heat in every direction, resinous, sharp, slightly smoky, the olfactory equivalent of a struck match. There's no gentle lead-in. The frankincense carries a particular density here, less the bright lift of church incense and more the smoldering weight of resin heated over flame. Black pepper delivers its dry, almost woody bite without retreating into pure heat. Sichuan pepper adds that distinctive vibration, a tingling, mouth-numbing quality that reads almost electrically on skin. The three together create a chord rather than a sequence, each note audible, none subordinate. Then the iris arrives, powdery and cool, and the composition tilts. Green bell pepper and pimento leaf join it, creating a vegetal clarity that wasn't telegraphed. The iris doesn't soften what's come before; it reframes it.
Cultural impact
Burning It All fits Pleuvoir's broader project of translating sensory atmosphere into wearable form, and the struck-match opening and pepper-forward architecture announce it as a fragrance for someone drawn to bolder, more confrontational spice composition. The opening is a statement: black pepper, Sichuan pepper, and frankincense combine to create an immediate impression of heat and resin that doesn't soften itself for easy entry.
