White Nights: Shuyukhi

Every perfumer has a favorite iris. This one is different – because no perfumer has ever had access to what’s inside this bottle.

The wildflower fusion of cassie and mimosa covered with a blanket of caramelized tonka bean and wild Cambodian oud. Succulent notes of peach and lisylang give a jammy savoriness to the buttery star of the show: iris.

But that wasn’t quite enough… and that’s how the Iris Noir OG composition got jacked up with vintage orris butter from the 1950s poured on top to intensify the creamy tone and make the flowery heart even whiter.

But the intense creamy floral beauty you smelled now wasn’t enough either! That’s how this sweet blast of iris got layered with the dark resinous grip of a Burmese oud distilled 30+ years ago that for me holds its own special place at the very apex of the agarwood “high” I get from smelling the finest oils possible from each region.

That blast is courtesy of Shuyukhi (2.5 grams per 30ml) that makes the iris heart of White Nights total oud-iris bliss to wrap yourself with.

Shuyukhi is one of my most impactful aromatics. It’s also fantastically malleable, which makes it a super versatile ingredient. The problem is I can’t find or make it again…

We’ve scoured the oud world in search of its like and have fallen short. Vintage Burmese oud of this caliber has become like fine Terengganu or Nha Trang oils that are impossible to replace. Shuyukhi even more so because this is the actual oud worn by Gulf royalty – shaykhs with bottomless budgets and decades-old private stocks – and the vintage factor in aged Burmese distillations is unlike anything else: you simply cannot mimic that green, cooling mentholated opening or the dark leathery-woody depth that follows it, unhurried, like incense that was never made into incense sticks – all of it the result of 30+ years of inner-compounding.

That’s why I aportion Shuyukhi with extreme discretion, and why this is the EO perfume that contains it. Smell White Nights, and you’ll know why…

You know how with peppermint crisp you get to taste an ‘enhanced’ coco flavor – it’s chocolate but brought to life in a way you wouldn’t have tasted otherwise. Same with caramel and salt, or chocolate and orange peel.

There’s no other perfume on Earth that gives you an enhanced iris fragrance. A fusion of honeysuckle, melissa, thyme, and rosemary would already convert the creamy iris into drops of sensual zesty zen. Then there’s that low-key peachy animalic undertone that makes White Nights so addictive.

Think of all that as the chocolate – and Shuyukhi as the mint. It takes the truffle-ish taste of vintage musk and imbues it with Shuyukhi’s peerless green-to-leather evolution – cooling and piercing at first, then dark and solemn, like aged incense wafting from you – all dipped into the sandal-creamy orris butter bath that makes this fragrance so ravishing.

It’s a stunning perfume. One that takes every facet that makes Iris Noir “a true 5-star fragrance” – and adds a resinous mentholated depth drawn from of the highest grade Myanmar ouds ever distilled.