Mystic Bliss Goldfield & Banks 2024

A review in anticipation of my 2024 rankings, Mystic Bliss finishes the year as the 2nd worst overall release with the lowest rating handed out this year. In many ways, Mystic Bliss has many of the same weak points as my worst release in 2023, that being Kilian's Blue Moon Ginger Dash: we are talking about designer-quality products with no performance, blending or value upside.

The scent opens with some promise: the mint and the fig bring a lively fruity-green top to Mystic Bliss that might make some think this is a contender for the top release of the year. However, the evolution is where the true colors of this scent are revealed. In terms of structure, the scent is intensely designer in its quality and smells very much synthetic. The core of the fragrance is made up by the masculine-aromatic heart with the clary sage and geranium, offering up some chemical-like nuances as well. The fig & mint notes fade out fairly quickly, leaving a very generic product that is being compared to products from brands like Hugo Buss and Jean-Paul Gaultier.

It feels like a tale of two stories with Mystic Bliss, given the opening felt like a high-quality product that would sit somewhere between Matiere's Parisian Musc Eau de Parfum and various Le Labo fragrances. Ultimately, the blend never improves after the highlighted top accords fade into obscurity. The performance on the product is very much poor: it has intimate sillage with the aromatic DNA lasting around 4 hours tops. I believe it was designed as a unisex fragrance for the spring & summer seasons. Even with this scent retailing for €155/100ml, I cannot, in good faith, rate the value for this type of slop more than a 1/10.

People misunderstand this fragrance. I think because they cannot place the smells. I know that there are notes in this perfume that I have never smelled in real life, because they are native to another land.

There is an herbal/medicinal quality that is made heavy by the fig. Not sweet, not warm. There’s actually a cooling and ergo, calming effect. I think this perfume is what an intense unisex spa might smell like on a busy day. The outdoor sauna and pool area is filled with reeds and water plants. You are aggressively made to relax and put at ease by this concoction of notes. I love it. I bought a full bottle, but I have not worn it out of the house. I have however worn it to bed and when I was feeling anxious. It is good for both of those things. It truly has a soothing quality for me.

I bought a small decant of Mystic Bliss because the notes sounded interesting, and was somehow disappointed in how this smells like a few other perfumes, while maintaining a vague designerish vibe. Even if I didn't end up wholly disliking this, I would not buy a full bottle nor a travel size. The mint in the opening is very refreshing, but it quickly gets overpowered by a sort of chemical smell that I can't quite attribute to one of the notes listed here. As it dries down, Mystic Bliss echoes Gris Charnel's dirtiness for me, and that makes me like it even less.

such an elusive scent. It’s hard to pin down and hard to describe. Warm incense wrapped around warmly spiced figs with brightly green notes that are like the idea of mint, richly warm caramel textures, and the richest woodiness dry down. This scent is a lot of things, it’s aromatic, smoky, fruity, creamy, sweet, woody, and yet all of this works. It’s a gorgeously mystical blend that makes for a fantastical fig!

Mint and juniper, a hint of fig. Smells fresh, like when you walk out of the shower. To my nose it's more of a masculine fragrance. It can get a little bit headache-y. It smells like a fragrant breath of fresh air.

The drydown is nice and slightly sweet. The sillage and longevity are somewhat poor.