Room 1015 Cherry Punk Eau de Parfum

What it smells like

Cherry Punk is the house's signature and its most-reviewed fragrance by a wide margin, and despite the name it is a leather scent first and a cherry scent second.

Cherry, saffron and Sichuan pepper open it — dark, dry, with the saffron immediately pulling the fruit towards leather rather than towards sweetness. The heart brings violet, mimosa and jasmine, powdery florals that give the middle a slightly dusty, cosmetic quality.

Then the base takes over, and it is the reason people remember this fragrance: leather, tonka bean and patchouli, with a distinctly animalic edge. The community accord ranking is unambiguous — leather at full weight, cherry just behind it, then sweet, animalic and warm spicy, with a smoky facet underneath. This is not a fruity perfume with a leather base; it is a leather perfume that happens to open on cherry.

Worth knowing before you choose: the Extrait de Parfum version is a different composition, not a concentrated version of this one. The extrait is cherry-led with metallic and fresh-spicy facets and no animalic or smoky character at all. This eau de parfum is the darker, more feral of the two.

Who made it

Composed by Jérôme Epinette, a French perfumer at Robertet in New York who trained at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery after a biochemistry degree in Dijon. He is best known for his long collaboration with Ben Gorham at Byredo, where he composed most of the line. His Room 1015 work is darker and more textural than that, reaching for leather and patchouli where Byredo reaches for clarity.

You can see the other fragrances he composed for the house, and for others, on the Jérôme Epinette collection page.

Who it's for

For people who want a leather fragrance with something unexpected on top. If you already wear dark leathers and find them monotonous, the cherry and saffron here give the genre somewhere new to go.

It is also the obvious starting point for the house, with over three thousand votes behind it. Be aware of the animalic facet — it is the element that divides opinion, and it is more noticeable on skin than on paper.

Unisex, though the leather-and-patchouli structure reads as traditionally masculine with a fruit top that pulls the other way.

When to wear it

Cold weather and after dark. This is an autumn and winter fragrance; summer heat pushes the animalic side forward in a way most people find too much.

Evening out, dinner, dates, special occasions — anywhere being noticed is the intention. It has the strongest presence of the eaux de parfum in the line and should be applied sparingly.

About the house

Room 1015 is a Parisian niche house founded in 2015 by Michael Partouche — Dr. Mike — a trained pharmacist who spent five years in London touring with his band before deciding that fragrance was the one discipline that could hold both halves of his life. The name is a hotel room number: 1015 of the Continental Hyatt House on Sunset Strip, the "Riot House", where touring bands took their after-parties in the 1970s.

The house calls what it does olfactory counterculture, and every fragrance starts from a specific cultural reference rather than from a material. The bottle is the same throughout — heavy coloured glass sized for the palm, under a faceted cap cut like a dark gem, black for the eaux de parfum and silver for the extraits. Cherry Punk is the house's best-known fragrance, built on London punk and the King's Road. See the rest of the line in the Room 1015 collection at Redolia.