The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
In 2016, perfumer Vincent Micotti unveiled a collaboration with conductor Teodor Currentzis and the Perm Opera, shaping a fragrance around the season of Spring. The concept was clear: not the bright, blooming Spring of marketing, but the insular one, the cold and foggy morning before anything has decided to open. Micotti built the composition around atmospheric textures rather than traditional florals, reaching for rhubarb, cannabis, rain accord, and ozonic notes to evoke a season felt through the skin rather than seen through the eye. The result is a study in grey weather, a scent that holds its breath rather than exhales perfume. Rhubarb lends its tart, vegetal bitterness as a structural note, something vegetal and unsweetened at the core.
What makes this composition distinctive is its refusal of the seasonal cliché. Micotti built around rhubarb's vegetal bitterness and cannabis's dry, herbal hush, anchoring the scent in notes that feel more like weather than ornament. The rain accord drapes a steady dampness across the composition, while ozonic and airy elements lift it into something atmospheric and slightly metallic. Incense and myrrh in the heart pull the composition toward something ancient and weather-worn rather than freshly petalled, lending gravity and a faint resinous warmth.
The evolution
The first ten minutes are cold, almost confrontational. Rhubarb's tart green bite collides with the airy, ozonic top notes and a thin, dry cannabis note, and the whole thing reads like stepping out of a warm room into a March morning that hasn't made up its mind. There's no sweetness to soften the landing. By the thirty-minute mark, the rain and ozone have settled into a steady grey drizzle across skin, and incense starts threading up through the damp, giving the composition its first vertical lift. The heart phase is where Iris does its quiet, powdery work alongside myrrh, and the fragrance finally feels like it has a temperature, somewhere between cellar cool and cathedral cool.
Cultural impact
Released in 2016, Ἐαp 16 M° Currentzis Perm Opera Edition (Spring) emerged from a collaboration between Vincent Micotti and conductor Teodor Currentzis, connected to the Perm Opera through the project itself. The fragrance was composed less as a seasonal floral than as a sonic translation of early thaw: the cold, foggy days before any bloom appears. The rhubarb and cannabis at the top create a vegetal, almost bracing entry, while incense and myrrh in the heart lend the composition an ancient, weather-worn gravity.
