The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
The BoM Collection presents two olfactory artworks, BOM Jasmine and BOM Incense, as a modern homage to timeless perfumery. For Vincent Micotti, the incense study was an opportunity to explore a familiar material through an unfamiliar lens: incense that doesn't perform, incense that argues. The brief was simple: capture the tension between nature and city, between sacred and profane. Urban incense, the kind that rises from street corners and train stations, from temples and late-night conversations, becomes the raw material for something stranger, drier, and more honest than its spiritual counterparts.
What makes BOM Incense distinctive is its refusal to sweeten the deal. Ethiopian frankincense anchors the composition with a slightly resinous, almost medicinal quality, but sandarac, a resin from North African juniper, introduces a dry, bitter dimension that most incense fragrances avoid entirely. Pistachio, too, is unusual in this context: not the sweet, lactonic nut of a gourmand fragrance, but something greener, more austere, almost dusty. Together, these materials create a dense, compact structure, one reviewer described it as a "green-grey density," a scent wall that holds together through sheer coherence rather than volume. This is incense treated as architecture, not decoration.
The evolution
The opening announces itself with green and grassy immediacy, the smell of a forest path, smoke curling through damp air. Within minutes, the grassy overtone recedes. What remains is dense, textured, and unexpectedly close. The Ethiopian frankincense asserts itself as the backbone, but it doesn't arrive alone. The pistachio fills the air holes of the incense, soft where the smoke is sharp. The sandarac adds a dry, balsamic bite, slightly bitter, slightly resinous, that keeps the whole structure from becoming sweet or linear. The result is a compact, coherent scent wall that holds for hours. The drydown is where the amber warmth finally settles in, smoke softening against skin rather than filling the room. Sandarac lingers closest, a quiet persistence that stays on fabric long after the wearer has left. On a scarf the next morning, the fragrance reads as warm, smoky, and intimate, not the bold statement of the opening, but something gentler, more personal.
Cultural impact
BOM Incense occupies a specific corner of the avant-garde incense space, alongside Comme des Garcons Series 3 Incense: Avignon, Profumum Roma Arso, and Maison Francis Kurkdjian Absolue Pour le Soir. But its green-bitter axis, pistachio, sandarac, sets it apart from more conventionally structured incense fragrances. It appeals to wearers who find beauty in difficulty, in fragrance that requires patience rather than offering immediate pleasure.
