A Forest Mystery

A Forest Mystery Review Dua’s take on Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles As you might have read in my A Cozy Tale of Winter review, I like coniferous scents. I like a wide variety of themes, and I typically don’t stick to one style for terribly long. I am always working on testing my own olfactory limits and what I can learn to perceive through scent. Fille en Aiguilles is a legendary scent from the house of Serge Lutens. Originally being one of the brand’s standard offerings, it eventually was inserted into a more expensive line for the niche purveyor, citing ingredient difficulties and limited resources. It was pulled from the US market, reintroduced, and now the famed release seems to only be available in France. In other words, it’s no longer easy to get this fragrance. I do have a decant of the more modern formulation of Fille en Aiguilles, which I will be comparing A Forest Mystery. I loved the scent, but not for the simply asinine price that they go for now. It's simply not worth it, plus the lasting power is abysmal. Two things that Dua seeks to remedy with A Forest Mystery. Let’s wander into these sacred woods and see what stories the ancient growth whispers to us. Upon receiving the scent, I am like a kid in a candy store, as most of us are. I just had to spray it, and my initial impression was surprising. The pine, which in the Serge is dark, sappy, balsamic, and dark, was strangely fresh, soapy, and lemony. I honestly drew parallels to Pino Silvestre with it at first. As with most Duas, patience is key. I was a good and somewhat responsible adult while I let it rest for over a month, and man, this scent transformed big time. Gone was the Pino opening. It was replaced with a realistic pine needle aroma, a bit dry, like needles on the forest floor that crunch underfoot, with a balsamic lift that feels almost cooling. The sappy fir darkened it up, but I must say that the Serge is darker, whereas the Dua is a bit fresher and snappier, leading to a more versatile scent. The most discernible difference between the Serge and Dua is the plummy jam that imparts an interesting sweetness in Fille. The Dua version is toned down, and if you weren’t looking for it, then you may not find it. This doesn’t mean the Dua is lacking, only that the style is slightly different, but it has its own strengths. The smoked wood, akin to a charred campfire log, radiates throughout the layers of the scent. It gives the fragrance a sublime and intricate feeling of the ruggedness of the untamed wilds. The Serge and Dua are equal in this regard. Fille en Aiguilles has subpar performance, lasting around 3-4 hours on my skin. It’s quite lackluster for a darker scent. The Dua improves this greatly, boasting around 9-10 hours on skin and days on clothes. The projection is also much more potent. Despite the lack of fruitiness, A Forest Mystery is a fantastic conifer scent. If you are someone that wants to smell like a forest without forcing people to think of Christmas trees, then this might be the scent for you. The pine and fir do carry into the heart, where you can feel the almost camphoric aroma they give off, but it’s not going to directly make you think of trees adorned with ornaments as it gets more woody and keeps the sappy needles in the background. While I would not say it’s an exact take, it’s a great attempt at what I imagine is a difficult scent to capture. Even if it’s not identical, it’s still a fantastic woodland scent for the price that isn’t too literal. It’s not a true forest scent due to staying perfume-y enough to be mass-appealing and versatile. You really can’t go wrong if you want a smoked incense and conifer fragrance, but you must be patient and let it rest for a while. It works quite well with a flannel or if you are roleplaying as Elmer Fudd at a Looney Tunes cosplay convention (not that I have ever done that). If you want to bring the wilds home and smell them without the risk of bear attacks, lakeside baths, and Bigfoot sightings, then this is your scent. Sorry gents, it doesn’t come with a beard, and anyone can rock this as well.

Opens with a soapy, fresh, and green, pine note. It has a slight synthetic smell on the initial spray, but that goes away quickly as it dries down. The mid and dry down are a soapy green, and slight woody pine. Quite a linear scent. Doesn't change significantly from open to dry down, with exception to the synthetic smell at the beginning. Unfortunately, with comparison to Serge Lutens Fille en Guilles (the fragrance it's attempting to duplicate) it's far off. Both are great pine fragrances; both have a fresh green open; but that's where the similarities end. SL Fille en Guilles is way more complex, with a symphony of dried fruits, beautiful fresh pine, smokey woods, spicy cloves and cinnamon, just heavenly! A Forest Mystery has none of those nuances. In defense of the Dua, it is a great, fresh and woody, pine fragrance. I would even say, if you want to get a great pine dominant fragrance, this is a great buy! In certain situations, Mystery Forest might even be better! But if you're buying it as a Serge Lutens Fille en Guilles alternative, you might be disappointed. That's a shame, because, Serge Lutens Fille en Guilles has been discontinued internationally, so if you really want it, you'll have to take a trip to France and buy it directly from their boutique. As a standalone, A Mystery Forest is a great, and unique, pine dominate fougere. Definitely worth it if you like pine, but don't want to smell like a tree.

Gorgeous smoky vetiver incense. The pine note is clean and herbal, and yes, it does give a bit of Pine Sol and maybe even a little turpentine, but some of us love that deep green sappy coniferous forest smell. I don't have Une Fille en Aiguilles, sadly, so I can't say how precise an impression this is, but it is perfectly beautiful in its own right. A Forest Mystery is aptly named. It doesn't really smell like Chanel Sycomore, but it conveys a similar mood or set of associations for me. Autumnal, crisp, a little melancholy. Woodsmoke, a bite in the air. Sycomore reminds me of the scent of oak leaves crunching under my feet, that bitter powdery vegetal smell. A Forest Mystery is more like walking in a glade of pines, with the sticky needles underfoot, maybe some sap from a felled pine tree. I had hoped my husband would like it enough on me that he would want a bottle of his own, but he mostly just registers this as an incense scent. I would agree that the incense note is prominent, but it is a very strange incense, one that mixes preserved or candied fruits (dates? figs?) with lots of pine and vetiver. I'm not sure I have ever smelled an incense like that! But it doesn't smell as much like pure nature as Sycomore does to me. A Forest Mystery smells more refined, less elemental. It is definitely unisex in the same way that Sycomore is, though, and weirdly addictive in a similar way.

This stuff is fantastic. I have never smelled the original but the scent that comes from this bottle is pure magic. It has this weird (in a good way) mysteriously wet pine forest smell. It feels like I'm walking in the woods directly after it has stopped raining, the leaves are still dripping, the sun starting to shine through the trees, there's a slight fruity scent from the berries growing on the bushes that lingers in the air, the wood is damp and slightly steaming from the warm air and rain mixture. It's just perfection and really makes me want to smell the real deal!

Pleasant piney scent. It has some facets reminiscent of fille en aguille, but it’s not as deep, rich, and resinous. I get more of a citrus amber at the top followed by pine. I like it in its own right, but fille en aguille is a masterpiece and this doesn’t quite live up to it.