Philosykos Eau de Parfum

Give yourself a hug. With this EDT, it’s warm, loving, natural, comforting, and even joyful. In fact, I’ve been giddy all day since wearing it; it just makes you happy. The opening is the damp soil, the soft grey bark of the Ficus carica and its green, pubescent leaves. But it’s all about the fruits, the hard green figs that become sumptuous and ripe, a glaucous deep purple with a tear of syrup at the ostiole. These figs—beckoning you to pluck them from the tree—are only a spray or two away. Notes: • The largest volume is 100ml / 3.4oz for $120. I feel this price is good for the complexity and quality of the fragrance. • No headaches, rashes, or sensitivities to report. • Completely natural. NO SYNTHETIC NOTES! • For me, the intro is green, and you get the soil, and the leaves and the bark. • The fragrance then gets sweeter but never cloying. • The drydown is very soft and comforting, some men may feel this is feminine. I recommend the fewest amount of sprays to avoid this? • Over-spraying will result in a very slight metallic sheen to the figs in the drydown that you’ll detect if your doing a lot of nose-to-wrist business (which you will). • It lasts a very long time on me—all day. • I feel positive and happy wearing this. Your cheeks will ache from smiling so much. • Perfect for day, summer. Appropriate in the evening, summer. Potentially appropriate for fall, even winter. • The drydown is also creamy which adds to this fragrance’s trans-seasonal potential. • As a man, I don’t feel ‘sexy’ per se, but the creamy drydown alludes to these possibilities. (But don’t buy this just for sexy-time). • Appropriate for a man and woman. Young and old. • Mood: casual. Attire: casual. Not for work days at PriceWaterhouseCoopers or similar venues. I just purchased this fragrance so I will perform more ‘tests’ in the near future, performing various activities, indoors and out, hot and cold days, on clothes or on the skin. • Projection is still being determined. I have samples of James Heeley’s Figuier, L’Artisan Parfumeur Premier Figuier (EDT), and Hermes’s Un Jardin en Mediterranee. I will do a comparison soon too. Enjoy! (...my first review)

If you're a botanist, this is your fragrance. So this is completely not my type of fragrance. I steer away from fresh and green scents. But there came a day, a warm humid day in late May, you know that day in western Europe when spring gives way to summer, and you feel it in the air, rain feels warm, humidity turns tropic, and we go from easygoing 20 degrees to 30 overnight, humidity and rain give way to drought and scorching sun, and there we go! Summer falls upon us! So in this kind of transition period into summer, I suddenly got a craving for... a green, fresh but milky scent, WITHOUT tea. The "without tea" is important, as I cannot stand green fresh scents with focus on green tea, bamboo, and the like. So I thought: what have a I heard of that is green, fresh, but grounded, not up in the air like all the teas, bamboos and hinokis I have tried. So I ordered a sample of Philosykos right away and oh my... it fits the season perfectly. It's so so so vegetal, so close to the ground like plants, think green colour that is wet, the air is humid. There is a very very very slight sweetness (fig fruit I assume?) but it does not come to forefront at all, it's the green parts of the plant that are the focus here. Where the opening is airier, more humid, it takes us into something milky, balmy, think coconut milk but still very green and wet. I absolutely adore the fact that this is a fresh green fragrance but it's so wonderfully weighed and grounded. The green notes in this make me think of green vegetal scents from early 2000s. Their only problem then was that they weren't grounded by anything at all, and they were so so so fleeting. Seeing how Philosykos was created end of 90s, my association fits. A fantastic green fragrance, only drawback is it's so intimate and if only I start moving around, it disappears from the skin fast. Does hold to textiles though. If EDP is so fleeting, I don't want to know how short lived the EDT is. I would love to have a bottle of the EDP, but I am still unsure - the price is high, while this is good for only a particular time in the year.

Created in 1996 by the exceptional nose Olivia Giacobetti, Philosykos is not simply a perfume, but a hyper-realistic journey to a land kissed by the sun. Inspired by memories of Greek summers on Mount Pelion, this masterpiece from the Legnoso Aromatico group remains, decades later, the absolute point of reference for anyone looking for the fig note in perfumery. Philosykos has the extraordinary ability to photograph the entire fig tree, not just its fruit, evolving on the skin in a magnetic way. The beginning is a burst of disarming realism. The fig leaf dominates the scene, giving a green, bitter, almost crunchy sensation, slightly dampened by the natural sweetness of the ripe fig. It's the smell of a broken leaf between your fingers. As the minutes pass, the fragrance softens. The green notes continue to keep the scent fresh and airy, while coconut makes its appearance. Be careful, though: it's not a "beach" or sweet coconut, but a creamy, tart coconut milk that perfectly recreates the white, milky sap of the tree. In the finish, the fragrance sits on a solid and comfortable base. Fig tree, woody notes and cedar wood emerge to give structure. The perfume loses its initial green humidity to transform into the memory of wood warmed by the summer sun. It is at its best in spring and summer, where its botanical freshness shines, but it can be a splendid nostalgic cuddle even in the cold months.Performance (EDP)Compared to the Eau de Toilette version, the Eau de Parfum is denser, slightly less green and more woody. It has good persistence on the skin and an intimate, elegant, never intrusive trail. Philosykos is an evocative, almost therapeutic perfume. It is the ideal choice for those who love "botanical" fragrances, clean and elegant, far from opulent or hyper-sweet commercial clichés. Wearing it means bringing with you a piece of Mediterranean summer, the shade of a tree and the freshness of lifeblood. A piece of niche perfumery history that never ceases to fascinate.

summer is just starting. me and my mom go to south italy for a short vacation. on our way home from the beach, we pass by a small store with fresh fruit. we buy some figs, the green ones that are still kinda hard, and flat peaches that are still hard on the touch. we come home, and i come to the kitchen to this exact smell. i love every second of wearing this. i kept doubting the blind buy for half a year, because of how often perfumes that are described by people as “too green” end up not being green enough for me, and i wasn't ready for disappointment. until i got to try it in duty free on my trip. this was love at first smell. my flight was delayed, and i think i paced around the diptique island for hours. money was tight with consideration for spendings on the trip, and it would be a greater decision to order it later when i'd be back home. but i couldn't wait and just bought it right there. it is as green as i wanted it for first two stages of breakdown. simply perfect. when it dries down, it has the slightly lactonic coconut feel, that just finishes the composition perfectly. i did't get any strong dry wood in this, more like sweet juices of under the bark. love love love to this one. it also mixes well with other fragrances, adding missing greenness to scents that i enjoy for other reasons.

Philosykos was my introduction into niche perfumes. I told the SA that I was looking for something green, grassy, nature-inspired, and she handed me this. It opens with a green, astringent, split open live branch. It's fresh, hyper-realistic vegetal note that immediately conjured up a lost memory. The memory of me walking around the fence perimeter of my childhood playground. Listening to Pearl Jam's Ten in my Walkman while the rest of the kids played on the jungle gym. Yes, I was the weird, introspective, artsy kid. In the corner of the playground, I noticed some sappy fruits peaking through the fence from a fig tree. At the time, I didn't know. My curiosity was piqued and I picked the fruit and opened it up. The branch produced a milky sap. I recall the forest green leaves, like sandpaper. I tasted the mildly sweet, jammy fruit without reservations. This was the age of innocence, curiosity, adventure, and when the entire world was at my fingertips...the carefree days before technology became commonplace...the days when children played outside and not behind a screen. To me, this perfume is that memory in a bottle.

This is The One that started it all. It was probably around 2002. I was still living in Boston, young, early career and broke. My signature scent at the time was mostly Givency Amarige and sometimes Mugler Angel in the winter. I always loved perfume but tended to have 2-3 max. One day I was in Neimans in the Copley mall and stumbled upon the Diptyque section. Loved the bottles and aesthetics! I think Philosykos cost about $88 for the largest size at this time and I thought it was SO expensive. After sniffing Philosykos, perfume was to become an obsession for me. I was used to perfumes smelling like 80s-90s mainstream designer stuff; mostly synthetic and “like perfume.” Philosykos was a whole scene, a whole experience, so new and different. I was mesmerized by Philosykos. Figs, leaves, branches, the whole freaking tree! I left Neimans with that bottle thinking it was so pricey I wouldn’t be able to eat the rest of the month. I loved wearing every spritz of that bottle. Thank you, Diptyque, and thank you Olivia Giacobetti, for making this amazing fragrance. 💜

A unisex fancy handsoap type of smell. Like luxury fresh linen. It smells crisp in the way that water droplets smell on the skin of a fresh apple if you get what I mean. It's such a natural, addictive sweetness that I just can't get enough of. This is fantastic, but crazy over priced. Overall rating: 9.7/10. I absolutely adore this fragrance. Rant incoming: Hopefully a dupe will come along of this soon, because I absolutely love this scent profile. I went to a boutique with a girl I was interested in, and she told me that it was just okay, and that it smelled like soap. Her favorite cologne in my collection is Club de Nuit Intense Man EDT (she preferred the EDT over the limited edition AND extrait), and when I sprayed Creed Aventus on a tester strip, she told me that she likes CDNIM way more. Point is, price point doesn't dictate the quality, performance, and how good a fragrance is. People tend to dislike dupes due to a superiority complex in the fragrance community, even though they could be spending less for the same quality. Rant over 👍

I am honestly in awe of this perfume. I was expecting it to be good, but definitely not THIS GOOD. I've never had something so fresh, so realistic, delicious, mysterious. Honestly. Love at first sniff, even before the spray. Unbelievably well made, almost poetic. I feel the green notes (leaf) and the earthiness quite prominently, and then some fresh, juicy, delicious moist fig being bit, and the dry down of a coconut cream character together with the green profile. It's, I dare say, the best perfume I've ever smelled in my whole life. Update: after wearing it constantly for a little over two weeks, I found an interesting papery-like note in the dry out, so, paper + coconut. It continues to be very beautiful. I think my nose got a little used to the greeness, but it's still an unbelievable fragrance. In terms of durability: it doesn't have much of a projection, it settles close to the skin but I catch whiffs of the green coconut all throughout the day. It's incredibly good for a green scent.

I was shocked by how beautiful this smells. It's figs. Just figs. Fig wood, stems, leaves, and fruit. Just beautiful. As somebody with an orchard, it reminds me of spring, when my fig trees start waking up from winter dormancy. It really smells like walking through a fig orchard on an early spring morning. Diptyque really captured the essence of the entire fig tree with this perfume. Top notes: fig leaves, fig stems, and the inner flesh of the fig fruit. Middle notes: fig bark, fig wood, mulberry leaves, and fig leaves. Base notes: fig roots and earth. (Anyone who has ever planted figs or dug up fig trees would recognize this woody and healthy-soil smell.) However, the only downside is that the sillage and longevity are lackluster. You need to reapply every 4–5 hours, and the price does not justify the performance. I was sad when my bottle finished :( Would I get this perfume again? So far yes, until I get tired of the smell.

Sampled on skin. This is like totally coconut dominant, and the coconut in here is the most perfect one I’ve ever smelled, a lil creamy but not thick or heavy, and combines with the wood to smell like toasted coconut flakes, and the fig adds a subtle, kinda jammy depth to it. Overall, this smells like the most wonderful, slightly woody and a little green, Raffaello. Just wow. Whaaoow. I want to smell like this forever. It's not thick or heavy or anything, I tested it on skin in hot summer, and I think it would work in all seasons. The most perfect fragrance to me, Diptyque cooked up this gem just for me. Spiritually this is my signature scent (except it would perform better) Okay but truly I'm biased because I fucking love coconut and whatnot, IF YOU HAVE THE SAME BODYCHEM AS ME and bought this expecting the vivid beautiful photorealistic fig tree scent that you can get from the EDT you would be sorely disappointed I'm sure

after a year of yearning after this perfume and going out of my way to smell it whenever we were in the vicinity of a diptyque store... i finally went halfsies on a full bottle with my partner so we can share <3 it’s just such a lovely, fresh, nostalgic, photorealistic scent. it’s green and milky and not too sweet. truly the whole fig tree! i spent summers as a kid and teenager at my great-aunt’s house on the mediterranean; she has this big fig tree in front of the house, between the stone steps that lead down to look out over the sea. this smells just like my memory of that place. i can’t wait to wear it there this summer as other reviews have mentioned, this is not a fragrance that you might want to buy if you really prioritize sillage. i haven’t found longevity quite as bad as people say, though – i catch whiffs of it as i move around throughout the day, and i'll still smell it on my wrists 8 hours after applying.

The opening note for me is like something almost aniseed/liquoricey, like I’ve crushed a fennel bulb underfoot. I’ll be honest, I dislike this opening note, however it can be forgiven as it disappears after a minute or so, giving way to a captivating fresh, sappy green with a hint of creamy fig. I don’t get coconut, though I can see how the creaminess of coconut milk is likened to the creamy note in this perfume. Unfortunately I’m one of those where the fragrance seemingly disappears from my skin, however I think I just go nose blind to it, as my husband can still smell it, and I can smell it on my clothes. I’ve been obsessing over finding the perfect fig scent, and this certainly captures the fig tree scent. Now I just need to find one that smells like a warm, sticky, almost overripe fig and I’ll be very happy indeed.

Absolutely incredible how much this smells like figs. I remember visiting the island Vis in the Adriatic a few summers ago. My dad had gone there many times as a kid and wanted to show me it, I guess, so I travelled there with my parents. Prior to the trip I hated figs, but after trying just one I was absolutely obsessed. Every other store I’ve bought figs from has not been able to match up to how ridiculously good these figs were. This fragrance reminds me so much of the figs I had there. So juicy and green. Smells EXACTLY like the fuzzy and somewhat rough skin of a sweet and ripe fig. I can almost feel the texture of biting into the fruit between my teeth as I smell it. I got a large bottle because I fear I may need to smell like this every day now 🤤🤤🤤 God I love figs

I wish there were a stronger version of this! I got this as a sample from LuckyScent (it was one of the ones I requested). I am one of the oddball cases in which I've actually tried and owned Debaser first and only learnt about this through that. I'd say the performance is on par if not a little better than Debaser, and while the openings feel almost identical to one another, Debaser really does have that "boys locker room" dry down type of smell that people have talked about, whereas this one is way more complex and I get a lot more of the coconut, which as a dude who loves to smell coconut even on myself, I very much enjoy. I might pick up a bottle of this at some point, wish they had an extrait as yes it is fairly intimate and doesn't project too much.

The sillage and longevity are honestly terrible, but I understand that fragrances that smell more natural and less synthetic usually don’t last very long on the skin. Still, God, I love this scent. I tried others hoping to find a longer-lasting version, like Premier Figuier and Fico Nero di Sardegna, but none of them came close to this one. At first spray, there’s a sharp green note, but within seconds you get this beautiful creamy coconut blended with fresh fig. It’s not jammy at all, it smells airy, natural, and almost sunlit. And then... goodbye. The scent disappears so quickly that you can only tell you’re wearing it if you press your wrists right up to your nose. Otherwise, you completely forget it’s there. Poor longevity but awesome scent.

This is a top 3 scent of all time for me. It’s green, vibrant, sophisticated, and just so vivid. It does all these things without being sharp and insulting. It’s so well rounded for being a photo realistic scent of a fig tree. It smells like a bright summer day in a sunny luscious green area. I want my entire life to smell like this. It’s creamy and the coconut notes people mention are there, but very faint. It’s coconut in the real sense, not the synthetic and fake way. My only gripe is that I wish this stuff lasted longer. I don’t have longevity issues with many fragrances, but I get MAYBE 3 hours. Good thing they’re refillable so I can be a little more generous with my application. I am so enamored with this scent it’s ridiculous

If I'm being real, I have no idea what a fig tree smells like, but ever since smelling this fragrance, I want to plant one in my backyard (if I had a backyard). This scent is comfort in a bottle. I want to smell it all the time so I spray it on my clothes during the day, and spray it on my pjs at night. I got a sample of this at the Diptyque store, and wasn't sure if I liked it at first, but I smelled it the next day and couldn't stop smelling it. I got sad when my sample was running low so I bought a full bottle the following week! It smells fresh and cool (temperature-wise), sweet, but not too sweet. It's as if I'm chilling under a tree looking over a cliff onto the ocean.

This perfume makes me feel good, gets me into a bright mood, it's super green and inspiring, I love the fig smell all over it! I wanted to try it out but even the tester was empty in store, went for blind buy and what an amazing surprise! :D Sidestory: One day I've been to home fragance store and asked if they had fig, only thing is that it was a german store and this sounds like something else there, the ladies blushed and had a big interrogation point in their face, only afterwards I understood what happened. Lesson learned to be careful asking for fig fragances around the world :D

incredible... this is the third fig scent i truly love, (the other two being vow factor and fig eleii) so fig is now identified as a favorite note! i would never have guessed. i do love to eat figs, but there's something honeyed about the flavor of a fig that made me think i wouldn't be obsessed with it as a scent. but i am. and philosykos is stunning- the way the coconut somehow makes this smell fresher and NOT beachy or tropical is really unique. this perfume is so bright, cheerful, playful, sunny, happy, without being a citrus or tea centred scent. i need full bottle...

I recently went on vacation to the Caribbean and brought along a decant of this. The home we rented was in the mountains surrounded by a rainforest. It was warm and slightly humid, and this fragrance was perfect for that trip. It’s so figgy and fresh and slightly addictive if you’re into figgy fresh. When I got back home, I bought a bottle. It’ll be a few weeks before I’m able to really enjoy this fragrance in NY, but I’m looking forward to it. I now have Philosykos, Misenzir’s and Jorum Studio’s Paradisi. I think I’m in pretty good hands this Spring.