Le Labo Shiu 25

There is a tree in southern China called the ho, whispered as shiu in its softer Cantonese inflection, and known to botanists as Cinnamomum camphora. Crush a leaf between your fingers on a humid morning and you get the whole story at once: a bright, almost medicinal lift of camphor riding over something green, cool and faintly sweet. Le Labo has built an entire fragrance around that gesture, and in doing so has made one of the most introspective compositions in its City Exclusive Collection. Shiu 25 is the Beijing exclusive, released in 2026 as an eau de parfum and available outside the city only during the house's annual August to September City Exclusive window. It is a fragrance of pink pepper and camphor at the threshold, iris and white blossom and frankincense at the heart, and a base of anchoring woods, amber and musk that holds the whole ethereal construction to the skin. If you know Le Labo primarily through the creamy sandalwood of Santal 33, prepare for a different temperament entirely: this is cool, powdery, resinous and deliberately hushed. What makes Shiu 25 fascinating to a trained nose is its chemistry. The ho tree is perfumery's principal natural source of linalool, the molecule that gives lavender its floral freshness and that also sits at the heart of the camphoraceous impression. Shiu 25 leans into that duality rather than smoothing it away, which is precisely why its Fragrantica score sits at a polarising 3.64 from 106 votes. This is not a fragrance that flatters everyone. It is a fragrance that rewards patience, and it smells like a temple courtyard at first light.