Room 1015 Wavechild Eau de Parfum

What it smells like

Wavechild is a salt-and-citrus beach fragrance built around Huntington Beach surf culture, and it is one of the better modern aquatics because it reaches for coconut and ambergris instead of the usual synthetic sea accord.

Mandarin orange, orange and lemon open it — sweet citrus rather than tart, bright and immediately summery. The heart is watermelon and coconut: the watermelon watery and fresh rather than candied, and the coconut dry, closer to husk and suncream than to dessert.

The base is ambergris, amberwood and cacao. Ambergris gives it the salty, skin-like quality that makes the fragrance feel like a real beach rather than a bottled idea of one, and the cacao is used so lightly that most people will read it as warmth rather than as chocolate.

Community accords rank it ozonic first, then aquatic, citrus, amber and coconut. Fragrantica publishes no olfactive family; citrus aquatic is our own reading of that profile and is labelled accordingly. With over two thousand votes it is one of the house's most popular scents.

Who made it

Composed by Jérôme di Marino, a French perfumer at Mane who trained through Givaudan and Takasago, the latter under Francis Kurkdjian, and who has since composed Kenzo World Power, Burberry Her Elixir de Parfum and Mr. Burberry Element. He is the nose behind most of the current Room 1015 line, and his particular skill is putting a difficult material at the centre of a composition and making it wearable rather than making it a joke.

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

Who it's for

For anyone who wants a summer fragrance that is not a generic blue aquatic. The coconut and ambergris give it warmth and skin-feel that the category usually lacks.

It suits people who like solar and beach fragrances, and it is an easy first purchase from the house — approachable, well-liked and nothing like as confrontational as Cherry Punk. If you want an aquatic with no sweetness at all, Wasabi Klub is the drier choice.

Unisex and widely wearable.

When to wear it

Summer, without question, and spring at the edges. It is built for heat and performs best in it; in winter it reads thin and slightly out of context.

Daytime, everyday, travel and holidays. Projection is moderate and friendly rather than assertive, which makes it a comfortable office choice in warm months.

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. Wavechild is the house's tribute to Huntington Beach surf culture. See the rest of the line in the Room 1015 collection at Redolia.