Inception

These are my initial thoughts, having just received this in the mail yesterday. First sprays was to wear around the house while I did chores and got ready for bed. Today is my first full day of wear at work, so we will see how it really performs. HOWEVER, right off the bat, I will say, I've never been more impressed by the first sprays of a clone fragrance. My bottle has a production date of 03.2026. This is an incredibly young bottle and has not had any time to macerate after first sprays. But boy were these first sprays good. The opening is very bright and citrusy, with a good zing from the ginger. I'd compare the brightness of the opening more to Art of Arabia 1's than Marwa or Aqua Dubai. Projection in the opening is fantastic on first sprays. Not overly loud, but noticeable, and not too much to be in the car with my best friend right after spraying. The opening lasts on my skin for well over an hour. I'm going on an hour and a half of wearing this fragrance this morning, and I'm just now really starting to get the mid notes popping in. The tea and cinnamon are perfectly balanced. My nose doesn't directly pick up the neroli, but I do believe I perceive it as more of a textural thing, giving a lightly dense airiness to the mid. I was not awake long enough last night to really get into the dry down (which tells you this stuff LASTS), but I will say the only thing I don't get from this that I do miss is the resinous and smooth frankincense that you get in AoA1. Time may bring that out more, but I will keep you guys updated. TIP: I start my day with a smell good routine, and I think everyone should, too. This means showering and applying moisturizer. I like to pair this, and most of my fresh tea-based fragrances, with the BareLuxury Ginger and Green Tea body lotion from Morgan Taylor, available on amazon. It smells amazing, fresh and airy ginger with a mild sweetness from the green tea, and works perfectly as a base moisture layer for most citrus and tea based fragrances. Smells wonderful on its own too, if you just like to smell like ginger and tea like I do. I also apply this to my hair by spraying a little bit of the fragrance (or pairing it with something similar like AoA1 on the hair to add more depth and variety while remaining cohesive) on a clean hairbrush to get the alcohol to begin evaporating, then brush it through my hair. This works wonders if you have long hair like I do. Hair traps fragrance so well and evaporates it more slowly than skin, which will make this last much longer and create a wonderful scent trail as you move. UPDATE: As I now also own a bottle of the OG imagination, I truly believe this to be the closest dupe on the market period. The citrus is a little stronger and more vibrant in the opening, which isn't a bad thing at all, and I do think the tea is a little stronger, although these differences could be due to this being an extrait. The dry down is identical to my nose. Inception is a little louder and stronger and the opening especially lasts longer than the OG on my skin, once again because extrait most likely. I will say though the OG has a certain refined airy blended quality to it that is not present in my bottle of inception. This could change over time as this bottle is barely a month old. Maturation and masterbiting could very well bring it even closer.

So, just got this like yesterday, and I got the 100ml Bottle. It looks soo beautiful, and it has a quite strong magnetic cap, overall. 9/10 for the bottle and the presentation. For the scent, I get this like super Lemony, it reminds me of Mykonos Slow Living, sweet citrus in the opening, and after a couple of second. I can smell the Ginger, that gave's a Warm and Fizzy and also spicy scent, mixed with the Lemon and bergamot. In the middle, I still get the Lemon&ginger scent, but this time theres a cinnamon scent, that gives a more Sweet, Woody, Spicy scent. And the Black tea gives like a Lemon black Tea Vibe, and i get the neroli scent but not to noticeable for me. And in the drydown, this is my favorite part. It clearly smelled like Black Lemon Tea Soap, it's Clean, It's Citrusy, It gets that Black Tea Note, the Sweet from the Cinnamon, mixed with the Woody notes. It's absolutely Amazing. For the Sillage, Longetivity, Projection, haven't tested it out yet. As I remember, the longetivity was like 6-7 almost 8 hours. I guess Inception gets an easy 6Hours on the skin. I will edit this after maturation

The person below me respectfully more then likely bought a full bottle of Imagination & then bought this & now has to hate on this because of how close it is to the original (with all respect you should have just saved your money & waited for a true clone to come out finally which is what I personally did as I don't think spending the money on the original is worth it for a fragrance this simple) I don't even blame them for hating on this though because popular fragrance designer/niche houses NEED to start realizing how SCARY accurate dupes are getting & they should start reducing their prices to make up for it because it is eventually going to get to a point where most dupes are Liquid Brun accurate (which is literally a copy & paste of PDM Althair & is literally indistinguishable from each other when they both dry down) & expensive fragrance houses need to start realizing this.

It's honestly so weird to me that a company as large, popular, and high-end as LV has to (likely) pay people to come on this site and downvote every dupe in the "reminds me of" section that's said to smell anything like their stuff. I don't think there is much crossover between the person buying dupes and their clientele who would pay retail for Imagination. They do everything they can to not have their fragrances associated with any others, and I get it, to a certain point. Also, this is so damn close to the OG that anyone who said otherwise is either a paid shill or a weirdo elitist. It's also much longer lasting than the original. Regardless, buy what you like. I'm not going to tell someone how to spend their money. But for me, I'll save mine whenever the OG is that expensive and options like this exist that can get so close.

I tried comparing this with my already matured Marwa, and when I compared the smell of the two, they were very similar, but Inception definitely smelled stronger, probably due to its higher oil concentration (or because it had yet to mature). My bottle of Marwa's performance is ass (about 1 hour of projection and then almost skin scent after that), so I bought Inception in the hopes that problem would be fixed, and so far, I think it has, as Inception definitely lasts longer than Marwa. 2 hours of projection and a total of 6 hours for me before it fully becomes a skin scent. I bought the 100 ml, and it has a magnet cap and pressurized atomizer. 9/10 would buy again.