Byredo announces its new scent Mixed Emotions with a short film by Fenn O’Meally
“I think we are a generation who speak so much about being seen. And I wonder how many of us truly feel seen.” So notes poet and trans visibility activist Kai-Isaiah Jamal in Tall Are The Roots, a cinematic short directed by Fenn O’Meally as a response to Byredo’s new epicene scent, Mixed Emotions. The film explores creative and personal responses to our unsettling times from a cast of vital voices in London’s creative culture.
Jamal’s emotive poem ‘It Knows (Even When You Don’t)’ is the golden thread that guides us through the 17-minute film during which we meet dancer and model Deneille Percival and musician Alewya Demmisse who each reveal how they use their artforms to face fears and disrupt spaces. In turn they are surrounded by a beautiful array of talent as the film moves through the rooms and grounds of Syon House. Dancers glide, boxers weave, mothers hold and musicians strum, together breaking binaries, ignoring absolutes and absolutely being seen. At times we’re also transported to an inner-city estate where double bass player Damsel Elysium reminds us what vulnerability truly sounds like.
“Mixed Emotions is about the ups and downs of the world and feeling that it’s okay not to be okay – and, for me, taking that idea was a starting point for the film,” O’Meally explains. “It was interesting to work with Denielle, who is at the beginning of figuring out his own story, Kai who is starting to understand the power of their voice but remains so tender, and Alewya who is so confident and assured in who she is. Each of them is at a different stage in their lives, and there’s such a beauty in exploring that journey.”
She adds: “We so often damn ourselves for not being confident all the time, or not having total clarity in where we are going. But actually, that sense of confusion is what makes something, or someone, relatable. Right now, everyone is on a journey; everyone is adapting and changing. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to evolve. It gives me hope.”
For Ben Gorham, founder and creative director of Byredo, it has always been important to ignite “collective emotions” through each scent and that need has never been greater than it is now as we come together to fight for racial, social and cultural equality.
“Mixed Emotions is my interpretation of a certain period, and my own experiences of it,” he says. “But collaborations have always been a big part of Byredo. Working with someone isn’t about giving away your babies, it’s about understanding the value of the village in raising them. The by-product of that is that I get to meet and be inspired by so many amazing individuals. Fenn opened up an entirely new world to me – and it would only be right if I paid that forwards and used Byredo to open up new worlds for other people. There are enough products in the world. I think it is more important to think about the stories we tell, and how we use products as a vehicle to deliver them.”
The scent itself expresses the tumultuousness of this moment – the darkness and the light, the hope and the pain. Top notes of maté and black current collide into ceylon black tea and violet leaves with a woody base spiked with papyrus. The complex results are at once intriguing and invigorating, demanding a unique response from each wearer. “I hope that people read the label and identify with that sentiment in its simplest form, and then find something deeper to relate to: the juxtaposition between the familiar and the unfamiliar,” adds Gorham.
Let’s leave the last, and most poignant words, to the full poem from Kai-Isaiah Jamal.
It Knows (Even When You Don’t)
If we know it boils
we also can hush
It still again.
If your heart
Has once been full
And boundless
It will always be free
And endless possibilities
Couldn’t possibly
Be reduced to
A handful of options.
Subconscious
Is your gut
And your gut well
That’s a synonym for
Guardian
Or of angel.
Or of both.
To be both.
I am but I also am not
And that is the shape of my silhouette.
That is the sound of my soul.
I’m trynna learn to ride for myself
Without conditions.
Unrehearsed. I’ve heard
Balance is key.
But unbalanced feels more like me
This body made from star crossed lovers
Desperately trying to live together
Even if dammed in destiny to die
Side by side.
Sometimes they make me split myself into sides
Always seem to be stuck within the inside of a binary
Forget I am spilling.
Always an overflow
A gush.
The single root that grows in the dark
In the unwatered soils
In the unwanted plains.
How long has hope lived inside lungs?
Long enough to think it is home?
Long enough to watch how light that exists.
As if darkness isn’t what allows light to exist.
Like illumination doesn’t rely on a black enough backdrop
A deep enough fall.
It won’t get easier with the lights on
But in the light there is liberation.
Patiently we listen for the
Bubbles to pop into a stillness.
Becomes more whole in the settle.
Victories and vices are closer than you think
Growth smells like sea salt
left on oven tops.
Where do you wander to be everything you haven’t yet?
I am stumbling into myself
Met more of me in the silence
Than I looked for in the noise.
BYREDO Mixed Emotions, 100ml for £178, is available on BYREDO.com
Film direction Fenn O’Meally
Photography Nick Offord
Choreography Abdourahman Njie
Executive Production Elizabeth Doonan
Production Cora Rodriguez
Production company Smuggler
Lead cast
Kai Isiah Jamal
Alewya Demmisse
Deneille Percival
Cast
Dancers Harry Alexander, Edwin Louis, Onyx, Jacob O’Connell
Mother Rashida Seriki
Boxer Antoine Dunn
Double bass player Damsel Elysium
Music Kelsey Lu
Words Helen Jennings
Visit Byredo
Published on 07/03/2021