Dare you take flight with another characterful scent from this bold house?

Listed notes

Bergamot, lemon, absinthe, carnation, clove, orange blossom, Peru balsam, dark musks

Top notes

You can say many things about the fragrances that come from the M.INT brand, but something you could never say about them is that they are boring. Each time a new one comes for testing we sniff nervously, waiting for one which is dull. We haven’t found it yet, and Winged Heart follows on in a similarly strong vein.

Winged Heart opens with a sweet and chewy, almost bubblegum vibe. There’s a mouthwatering hint of lemony citrus in the background and a big, round dollop of sweet and spicy gobstopper in front of it. A razor sharp whine of a big white floral, evocative of the heady, exotic scent of tuberose hums away to itself and whilst all this might sound a bit disconnected, it works really well. The floral aspect is, at this stage particularly, huge. It has a looming intensity which you will either revel in or shy away from. This doesn’t ever feel like a fragrance which will leave you on the fence.

There’s something about Winged Heart which is oddly reminiscent of the sci-fi B movies of the 1970s, a bit out-of-this-world, a bit wacky but full of odd, undeniable charm and loads of imagination.

Heart notes

The spicy roundness, which sits somewhere between clove, carnation and gobstopper gradually works its way forwards as the scent unfolds. It sits in the front of the smellscape like a hot, sour boulder and topped only by this fantastical flower accord. This is only a problem though if you can’t make friends with it; if you can, it’s satisfying that it is so present and so dominant in the composition because it delivers plenty of punch.

A touch of something warm and animalic whispers off to one side and as you try and catch what it is, it vanishes behind the huge gobstopper boulder, only to reappear later, in the base. Another moment a fleeting glimpse of something which smells of the powdery, watery orris rushes by. It’s this complicated scaffolding which is really intriguing about M.INT scents and confirms what we said right at the top: regardless of whether you like this fragrance or not, you couldn’t for one minute say that it was dull.

Base notes

If you could only choose one phase of this fragrance then surely the base is where the scent comes closest to brilliance. The spicy clove rolls away to one side, it never disappears, but it does ease off a little and allows the more floral aspects to fill out and breathe a bit more. The heady, floral sweetness and the smoother, more resinous qualities of the fragrance seem to wrap around one another like the striations in a stick of rock: the interplay between the two feels effortless.

Dark, musky tones are the final phase of the fragrance’s wear and they feel really special: magnetic, fluffy, but also reminiscent of sweet, dark liquor. If this were wings it would be the wings of a beautiful parrot, but at night, in the depths of the hot and steamy jungle. And because this is a M.INT fragrance, the parrot would be a gigantic alien invader terrorising the locals in a re-imagining of King Kong.

The other stuff

The longevity of Winged Heart is really good. It lasts easily eight hours following an application. The projection of the scent is also very solid – louder at the start than it is towards the mid and latter phases of the wear. At the beginning, it goes beyond handshake distance, and then calms down to handshake-noticeable or so.

It’s almost impossible to pigeon-hole this fragrance as being for one particular gender or another. Rather than it being defined by outdated conventions, it has this joyful eccentricity which will appeal to, well, joyful eccentrics rather than anything else.

We’ve previously reviewed Meek Passion, Affecting Mind and Rainy City by this brand, each and every one is without a doubt a bold and uncompromising scent. Approach with caution, and allow the fragrances to seduce you, but once you find one to fall in love with you will go hook, line and sinker.

Buy it

Winged Heart is available from Bloom Perfumery London where it is priced at £190 for 70ml EdP. Given that it packs quite a punch, we’d expect this size of bottle to last for quite a while.

You can also buy Winged Heart from the M.INT web boutique.

We were kindly given a no-strings-attached sample of Winged Heart by Bloom Perfumery and thank them for their generosity.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay.