Alchimie Rochas 1998 Eau de Parfum

...this is how the previous reviewer categorized it. The chaotic globetrotter, that is exactly me, and I have probably never found a fragrance that suited me so well. I wore the scent in my early twenties; it was the smell of my first shared apartment and the rumpled sheets, memories of my first boyfriend, first jobs, and a lot of chaos come rushing back. We didn’t know it back then, but very soon the world would radically change through mobile phones and the internet. It was fin-de-siècle, the end of the analog era. We had neither a television nor a computer in that first shared apartment; in the evenings, we cooked ratatouille, discussed, and drank a lot of wine. To watch movies, we went to the cinema. Friends would drop by spontaneously; either you were home or you weren't. The dark clouds that would soon be visible in the sky over New York, heralding a new era of war and terror, existed back then only in the imagination of the screenwriter of Fight Club. Yes, the scent was chaotic, but the world was not; it was open, and the future seemed bright. And that also reflects alchemy: brightness, playfulness, freedom. It was a positive scent, completely devoid of melancholy and seriousness.
When I then set out to explore the world, the bottle was empty and disappeared from the stores. The world had changed at a dizzying speed, and nothing would ever be the same again.
I have owned a miniature for a few months now that I smell when I want to remember that time.