Sixth Sense

I wasn't sure I liked this at first it was so unusual. But I have learned something about Marilyn Miglin's perfumes; they tend to grow on you. I tried this again today and found a new love! It smells very light, creamy, a little sweet too. I think it smells a bit like Marilyn's Zanzi.

This is a nice basic patchouli scent, worth checking out if you like patchouli. At the opening, I smell mostly patchouli, with a prominent dose of cloves. I tend to categorize patchouli into two branches – sweet or not. This is definitely not sweet. It is that sort of cool outdoorsy patchouli. This one has the added unexpected dose of cloves, which adds a certain spiciness at the opening, but the spicy note doesn’t last. This dries down to pretty much pure patchouli. This fragrance has strong sillage and lasts pretty long once it dries down. I like it best when used lightly.

Sixth Sense EDP The recently-late (March 2022) Marilyn Miglin created fragrances that always stood alone even within their larger fragrance category or family. Her classic 70s chypres (Pheromone and a few of its flankers), her white florals (Destiny), her fruity florals (Goddess) were all distinctive compositions, never duplicated even when compared to others in their respective subgenres. Sixth Sense is the most “modern” smelling of any of the dozen or so of her fragrances that I own—and if you know my hunger for dry, even sour greens and chypres of the 60s, 70s and 80s, you know that’s not necessarily a “positive” for me. However, although Sixth Sense is a lot less dry—it borders on a boozy/wine-like sweetness—than I’d like, and although it’s one of the few Miglin scents I’ve smelled that probably wouldn’t send a teen in 2022 running in the opposite direction, it still holds its own in the “watery, floral patchouli” camp. Another reviewer complained of the unabashed/notable syntheticness of the patchouli, and I’d agree with that, although it’s still fairly tolerable for me here (as opposed, for example, to the intolerably watery plastic patchouli chicanery of Jean Paul Gaultier Ma Dame EDP, which I had to give away). Coincidentally, I sampled Calvin Klein Deep Euphoria EDP—nope, not “deep” and nothing to do with the original Euphoria, just a watery, rosy patchouli—around the same time as Sixth Sense, and they could fit in the same general category of ‘modern floral patchouli’ (the cloves/spices named in Sixth Sense’s marketing materials aren’t a major component to my nose). And I thought to myself, “Despite this category being so different to those of her 70s, 80s and 90s-exemplary works, Miglin does this category better than Calvin Klein, a house of extreme popularity and durability).