Philosykos is a tribute to Desmond Knox-Leet and the memory of the white house on the slopes of Mount Pelion in Thessaly, where he lived during his Greek summers. To get to the sea every day, he had to walk through a field of wild fig trees.

Once, Desmond came back to Paris with a small box he had made for Christiane Gautror which was filles with treasures, each wrapped in a small numbered package. A bit of marble from the Acropolis, a fragment from Cape Sounion, a stone picked up in Troy, shards from pottery from Mycenae, a red stone from Mistra, a black shell from a favorite beach and a dried fig leaf still exhaled its fragrance.

The success of Philosykos - the friend of the fig tree in Greek and reference to Plato, who adored its fruit and claimed it had the power tio strengthen intelligence - is owed to its natural olfactive balance.

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