Les Mystères

A dose of sweet fig, fresh leaves and fruit mixed with smooth amber notes. To my nose, the most prominent note is fig, and it reminds me an Italian soap bar I recently purchased. Which is to say, it has a fresh smoothness—almost like fig leaves dipped in milk. That’s not to say I detect a lactic note, but just that the overall composition is seamless, soft and pleasing, as lactic notes often are. Maybe the amber notes play a role here. This fragrance is absolutely lovely but I do not associate it with mysterious allure, or esoteric beauty, or existential wonder, as I do other gorgeous (and more aptly named) Alkemia fragrances including The Raven, Gothique and Arcanum. Misnomer aside, this fragrance seduces with its masterful combination of fresh sweetness and subtle warmth.

I love this perfume, and I'm not sure if the other reviewers allowed it to mature, as it seems that most applied it right out of the bottle and left a review. Obviously the perfume preforms differently on different skin, but after allowing it to mature, the major notes are fig and frankincense. The fig isn't super gourmand but more lactonic, almost like a bar of goat's milk soap. The frankincense provides a lovely darker edge to this otherwise fresh perfume, and the other minor notes serve to round it out and add some three-dimensionality. This scent is perfect for someone who wants a fresher, clean scent, but also doesn't want to smell super sweet or like a bunch of flowers, which is definitely me.

I am so glad my nose loves this scent. I was a bit put off by the reviews but upon sniffing it the first time and especially after letting the bottle marinate for a few days the scent just gets better and better. It opens up with a sweet, juicy fig and tea mingling, the tea giving it a nice splash of greeniness and freshness. After that you start to get wafts of incense and amber which become dominant after a while. I get almost no musk, a skin musk at best, which I love. It develops into this lovely warm scent that just envelops you into its unabashed coziness. It's an understatement to say that I'm in love.

The fig and tea notes feature most prominently in the opening of this one. It is more subtle than I was expecting it to be based on the notes. Definitely unisex and very sophisticated. The word that keeps coming to mind is "elegant." Musk and amber pop out gradually as it dries down. This makes me nostalgic for fall. I find the tea note in particular very tranquil and soothing--it keeps this scent from being too heavy and musky. May be one of my all-time favorites I've tried from Alkemia, right up there with Smoke & Mirrors.

This is a great concept, "A resinous opulence of aged frankincense, black figs, labdanum, dark amber, Russian tea, swirled with a trio of sensual musks." Unfortunately the frankincense overpowers everything else. There is some bitter herbaly tea, some honey-ed sweetness from what I presume is the fig, but they are so muted and exist only in the background of the perfume. There is certainly a pine-sol like note lingering around in here, but it's not over powerful nor does it ruin the perfume entirely. While it's not bad, it just doesn't meet my expectations. To be fair my sample was a couple of years old. 5.5/10