The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Tasty Kiss emerged from Céline Ellena's work with Psychotic London, a house that treats fragrance as emotional statement rather than pleasant backdrop. The 2023 release takes its name seriously: a kiss, the kind that's hard to forget. Ellena built this around the contrast that defines the brand's best work, edible sweetness on one side, something rougher underneath. The mirabelle plum opens sharp and full, the kind of fruit note that announces itself without apology. But the frankincense in the heart suggests the kiss has a story behind it, something not entirely safe. The name Tasty Kiss isn't a promise of comfort. It's a dare.
What makes Tasty Kiss interesting is the way the honey behaves. Orange honey doesn't just sweeten the composition, it bridges the gap between the bright fruit opening and the darker frankincense heart. Without that honey, the fragrance would be two separate ideas: sweet fruit, then smoky incense. With it, the transition feels intentional. The frankincense here leans smoky rather than churchy, closer to memory than ceremony. Combined with black musk in the base, the result is warmth that stays close to the skin rather than announcing itself across a room. The red cedar only becomes apparent as the fragrance fades, a quiet final word from something that refused to shout from the start.
The evolution
The opening arrives fast, mirabelle plum and red fruits, sweet-tart and immediate. There's something almost edible about it, like biting into ripe stone fruit at the edge of summer. That burst holds for the first thirty minutes before the honey begins to soften the edges, not replacing the sweetness but deepening it. The frankincense doesn't rush in. It waits until the honey has settled, then arrives not as smoke but as atmosphere, the sense of a place rather than a material. Some wearers read it as churchy, but on skin that reads warm rather than cold, it reads as memory instead. The black musk holds everything close, never letting the sillage exceed intimate range. This is a fragrance for when someone is already leaning in. The drydown belongs to the cedar and the musk. After four hours, what remains is a warmth that could be skin, could be fabric, could be the pillow of someone you shouldn't be thinking about. The frankincense fades last, the ghost of incense smoke in a room that's otherwise gone quiet.
Cultural impact
Tasty Kiss sits in an interesting corner of the niche fragrance world: fruity enough to be approachable, dark enough to be distinctive. The frankincense-and-honey combination in the heart is the kind of move that invites strong opinions, some wearers find it remarkable, others find it discordant. That's precisely the point. Psychotic London's positioning isn't about universal appeal; it's about emotional resonance with those who want fragrance to do something beyond smelling pleasant. For this house, divisiveness is a feature, not a bug. The 2023 release finds its audience among those who've grown tired of safe, mass-pleasing compositions and want something that takes a position.
