Toskovat Inexcusable Evil: The Fragrance That Smells Like War

Gunpowder hanging in the air, the cold metallic taste of blood, and the dust of a building that is no longer standing. That is the opening. It is meant to hurt.

Most perfumes want to be liked. Toskovat Inexcusable Evil wants to be understood.

A protest that sold too well

It was conceived in the opening weeks of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, while the house itself was still launching. Its maker, David-Lev Jipa-Slivinschi, works out of Bucharest and is, by most accounts, a former film student who walked away from screenwriting during the pandemic. He has said he built this as protest: an image of war can be scrolled past and forgotten in seconds, but a scent worn on your own skin all day cannot be ignored.

Then the protest outsold everything else the house makes, by roughly three times, and that unsettles its own creator: "I seem to have failed in my endeavour. Or maybe we are just moths and Inexcusable Evil is the flame."

The register fits the name. Toskovat comes from toska, a Slavic word with no clean English translation, an ache somewhere between nostalgia and anguish, and the house calls each release an extrait de memoire, a memory extract. This is the memory nobody wanted.

The strike, the wound, the aftermath

The opening is the strike: gunpowder and a sharp ozonic, metallic air, like the moment just after something has detonated. For the first few minutes it can read as almost repellent. You are meant to flinch.

The heart is the wound. An iodine and blood accord rises with clinical realism, ringed by scorched flowers, resinous copaiba balm, smoky nagarmotha and tarry guaiac wood. More than one reviewer has described it as smelling like bleeding out on concrete surrounded by twisted metal.

Then the smoke clears and the base is the aftermath: wet concrete, rain on stone, incense and sandalwood. Grief made mineral. It is an extrait, 8 to 10 hours on skin with strong sillage, projecting hard for the first few hours before settling into a skin-close haze of smoke, wet stone and incense.

Who it is actually for

Not the office, not a date, not an ordinary Tuesday. If you need something a shared room will forgive, start with our office-safe unisex picks instead.

It is for collectors who want a conceptual landmark, and for anyone curious about what perfume can do when it refuses to be decorative. The reaction it provokes, fascination or revulsion, is not a flaw in the composition. It is the entire point.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Inexcusable Evil wearable daily?

For most people, no. It is a polarizing conceptual extrait, not an office or everyday scent. Wear it when you want to sit with what it is saying, not when you need to blend in.

How long does it last?

It is extrait strength and lasts 8 to 10 hours on skin, with strong sillage. It projects hard for the first few hours, then settles into a skin-close haze of smoke, wet stone, and incense that can linger for the rest of the day.

Is it unisex?

Yes. Like the rest of the house, it is built as a conceptual, genderless composition, meant for anyone drawn to narrative perfumery rather than for a particular gender.

Meet it on your own terms: a 2ml decant of Inexcusable Evil puts the whole arc on your skin, more than once, before any bottle decision.

Inexcusable Evil does not ask to be liked. It asks to be understood.