Mossland 12.09

I have blind bought this (12.09 Mossland EdP by Neydo, 50ml, 86€) on the perfumer’s website, which is the only place where it is available at the moment, and it arrived after one week. ---PACKAGING AND BOTTLE--- The packaging was interesting. The cardboard box of slate grey rough paperboard is perforated in a specific pattern by various circles of two different sizes through which a greyish petrol-green cardboard insert is visible. This insert is fully sealed into the side of the box and cannot be taken out, which is an interesting design choice potentially making the box a bit sturdier for transport. The small print on the bottom says the perfume contains actual Evernia Prunastri (Oakmoss) Extract. The owners of the brand Neydo are White Space Brand Lab AG (on Neydo’s website, it says “White Space Lab Brand, owner of the brand of Neydo” instead). After giving addresses in Switzerland and Belgium, it says “Made in Korea / Perfume made in France”. The bottle itself is a good, pleasant weight in my hand, of a dark moss green colour, and very glossy (do not touch with greasy or recently moisturised hands, it’ll slip away!) and reflective. The cap, which has the same circle design as the box, was not securely on the bottle as I opened the packaging, and capping the bottle is not giving me a satisfying tactile feedback. The “Click!” I am expecting to hear is stopped short, and it feels as though the cap still wanted to be pushed down a half millimetre before it would be securely locked in. I assume that is also why the cap was off inside the box, causing it to get a small dent during transport. The atomizer seems OK, thought it does drench the skin quite a lot even from 10cm away. ---FIRST IMPRESSIONS--- I spritzed it on one wrist before looking at any Fragrantica information. Even before I went in to smell my wrist, a surprisingly sweet amber smell pervaded my vicinity, and when I went in for another sniff, my nostrils were punished for being too greedy by the alcohol contained in the perfume. So - fair warning! - wait a couple of seconds before you try to smell this! Once five seconds had passed, notes of cypress and juniper berry were coming through, with the amber still very much present but slowly acting like it wanted to take a back step. I was surprised to read that one of the opening notes is supposed to be pink pepper, which I adore in cooking and in perfumes; so I was unconsolably disappointed to not smell any pink peppercorns in here. Neither have I detected any clove in this. All in all, it is not very spicy, which might have balanced out the sweetness of the amber. As this dries down, some cedar wood is timidly whispering to me of lush, dense forests on a not-too-chilly autumn's day, but then a cheeky blob of caramelly amber appears in my periphery vision, threatening to destroy the illusion. ---DRYDOWN--- As this perfume evolves on my skin, I am imagining that I can smell ambergris and a slight hint of oakmoss. It is certainly there, but for its name (Mossland), the perfume remains decidedly too sweet and ambery, and is devoid of or severely lacking in woody, earthy or mossy accords. Where the complex and subtle notes of oakmoss and cedar wood come through, it is somewhat overpowered by the sweet aroma of the amber. After some ten to fifteen minutes, however, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the amber had taken a further step back to let the oakmoss, cedar wood and even some vetiver shine through! If I did not know that I sprayed the same perfume on the other wrist after eight minutes had passed, I would have thought those two scents to be completely different perfumes; the metamorphosis is shocking! Okay... maybe the name of the perfume is not too far-fetched, after all! The amber is definitely here to stay, but I hope that the other notes do not give up in the long run, either! ---PERFORMANCE--- This perfume sits very close to the skin on me, and even though my wrists are by my torso as I type this review, I cannot smell this, unless I nigh smash my nose against my skin. This may be a teething problem of a new perfume house, or it may be a conscious choice by the creators, and I respect that, since scents that stay very intimate have their areas of use. I greatly prefer them to painstakingly penetratingly projective perfumes. With the way the scent performed in the past half hour (+8 minutes) on either wrist, however, I do not have high hopes for its longevity, which is a bigger let-down for me than any aspect of its sillage would be. It means I would need to carry the heavy bottle with me and re-apply once or twice throughout the day, having to go through the perfume metamorphosis every time. ---CONCLUSION--- Mossland is a very decent scent by the French perfume brand Neydo, owned by White Space [Brand Lab AG/Lab Brand]. It starts out very sweet to the point that nothing else might ever come through, but slowly cypress, juniper, oakmoss, cedar wood and vetiver materialise on one’s skin. I wish this perfume were even mossier and woodier, and I wish the perfumer(s) had not been as heavy-handed with the sweetness in this. But I like this perfume notwithstanding its cons, and I can definitely see myself wearing it occasionally during this cold autumn season, be it during the day or on an evening out with friends, or even to bed, since it is such a gentle and léger scent. The price is not too absurd, either, though for the lower-end performance that this perfume shows, I would have expected this to cost somewhere around 50€ for 50ml, and not 86€ for 50ml. Would I buy this again? Not necessarily. Am I at peace for having bought this blindly? Absolutely, it is a soothing scent profile that I have not yet had in my repertoire.