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Helpful Review
Discontinued for a reason - it relaunched as a better fragrance
Continuing where I left with the VIII: Rococo - Immortelle review approx. a month ago, the upcoming reviews & statements will have a heavy emphasis on less-covered products as my sampling list includes various discontinued scents and premium launches. The coverage is still with British luxury brand Clive Christian, this time with their 2017 release Chasing the Dragon Hypnotic, a discontinued release in the Addictive Arts collection that I believe previously retailed at €720/75ml. I feel like the discontinuation of a fragrance is very much a case-by-case example as I've had massive hits like Single Malt London and moderate disappointments like Apple Brandy New York. With Chasing the Dragon Hypnotic, I find myself leaning more towards the latter than the former.
I feel fortunate that I came into this sampling session completely blind, because many of the reviews and statements are putting emphasis on aspects that I cannot relate to. For me, Chasing the Dragon Hypnotic opens coniferous-spicy-woody with light medicinal ambers. The complexity is unequivocally there and I'd place it somewhere between a very intensely resinous fragrance like Roja's Parfum de la Nuit 1 and less intense fragrance like Le Labo's Eucalyptus 20. In my draft, I did also write down Serge Lutens' Fille en aiguilles which is the number 1 fragrance in the coniferous genre.
Once I was able to contrast that opening experience to the actual notes, I felt like I had nailed it. You get a very prominent contrast between the resinous-spicy notes; i.e. the incense, labdanum, amber and maybe even elemi; and the woody-coniferous parts, mainly expressed through the fir balsam. There's very little development on-skin and the scent continues to sit in that resinous-spicy-woody scent class for a majority of the time that I had it on, both indoors and outdoors. And then, around ~2-2.5 hours into the dry-down, I feel like I started to notice the thing that others on here are mentioning: the cherry. And when I say notice, I truly mean there are trace amounts of the note in this wearing experience to the point where fruity is not an accord that I can associate with. I think that lack of a prevalent cherry limited interest in the product, pushing Clive Christian to discontinue the fragrance and later reintroduce it through a clearly superior twist, that being Jump Up and Kiss Me Hedonistic, a top 10 fragrance in the niche market as of early 2026.
There are many disappointing parts about Chasing the Dragon Hypnotic. The linearity leaves me underwhelmed as the brand subsequently had great success in building various layers into both Hedonistic and XXI: Art Deco - Blonde Amber. The performance is very much disappointing as the sillage is clearly below average (I have an official 2ml sample) while longevity is still up in the air as I write this review, albeit I am thinking it'll end up being around 8 hours (6/10). I'm not 100% certain on the retail price tag as I've seen contradictory information elsewhere (I believe I also saw €910/75ml), but even if I give it the benefit of the doubt at €720/75ml, I'd argue there's significantly better value both in the market overall and in this price class (a criticism that I also highlighted for all of the PDLNs from Roja).
To offer an analogy, Roja launched Parfum de la Nuit 2 after having released Enigma pour Homme Parfum and at the time people were comparing the two as a result of the original Enigma versions (the 100ml black paper plaque ones) selling more spicy-resinous in the base than the versions you can purchase today. By discontinuing PDLN2, Roja pushed people towards a more mainstream & cheaper product. It is very much the same with Chasing the Dragon Hypnotic: Clive Christian opted to release Jump Up and Kiss Me Hedonistic, a more mainstream & cheaper product, and to discontinue Hypnotic. Unlike PDLN2, Hypnotic's availability in the market is extremely scarce (esp. in Europe) and as a result I assume the demand will be there for a long time. When they do pop up, they typically trade in the €600-700 range and for that money, I find it a hard sale.
I feel fortunate that I came into this sampling session completely blind, because many of the reviews and statements are putting emphasis on aspects that I cannot relate to. For me, Chasing the Dragon Hypnotic opens coniferous-spicy-woody with light medicinal ambers. The complexity is unequivocally there and I'd place it somewhere between a very intensely resinous fragrance like Roja's Parfum de la Nuit 1 and less intense fragrance like Le Labo's Eucalyptus 20. In my draft, I did also write down Serge Lutens' Fille en aiguilles which is the number 1 fragrance in the coniferous genre.
Once I was able to contrast that opening experience to the actual notes, I felt like I had nailed it. You get a very prominent contrast between the resinous-spicy notes; i.e. the incense, labdanum, amber and maybe even elemi; and the woody-coniferous parts, mainly expressed through the fir balsam. There's very little development on-skin and the scent continues to sit in that resinous-spicy-woody scent class for a majority of the time that I had it on, both indoors and outdoors. And then, around ~2-2.5 hours into the dry-down, I feel like I started to notice the thing that others on here are mentioning: the cherry. And when I say notice, I truly mean there are trace amounts of the note in this wearing experience to the point where fruity is not an accord that I can associate with. I think that lack of a prevalent cherry limited interest in the product, pushing Clive Christian to discontinue the fragrance and later reintroduce it through a clearly superior twist, that being Jump Up and Kiss Me Hedonistic, a top 10 fragrance in the niche market as of early 2026.
There are many disappointing parts about Chasing the Dragon Hypnotic. The linearity leaves me underwhelmed as the brand subsequently had great success in building various layers into both Hedonistic and XXI: Art Deco - Blonde Amber. The performance is very much disappointing as the sillage is clearly below average (I have an official 2ml sample) while longevity is still up in the air as I write this review, albeit I am thinking it'll end up being around 8 hours (6/10). I'm not 100% certain on the retail price tag as I've seen contradictory information elsewhere (I believe I also saw €910/75ml), but even if I give it the benefit of the doubt at €720/75ml, I'd argue there's significantly better value both in the market overall and in this price class (a criticism that I also highlighted for all of the PDLNs from Roja).
To offer an analogy, Roja launched Parfum de la Nuit 2 after having released Enigma pour Homme Parfum and at the time people were comparing the two as a result of the original Enigma versions (the 100ml black paper plaque ones) selling more spicy-resinous in the base than the versions you can purchase today. By discontinuing PDLN2, Roja pushed people towards a more mainstream & cheaper product. It is very much the same with Chasing the Dragon Hypnotic: Clive Christian opted to release Jump Up and Kiss Me Hedonistic, a more mainstream & cheaper product, and to discontinue Hypnotic. Unlike PDLN2, Hypnotic's availability in the market is extremely scarce (esp. in Europe) and as a result I assume the demand will be there for a long time. When they do pop up, they typically trade in the €600-700 range and for that money, I find it a hard sale.