Mavila16

I really like this one! It’s my first dossier perfume and it didn’t disappoint. I cannot speak to how well it dupes The Matcha 26, I have smelled the original but only in passing in stores so I don’t feel like I can speak to the differences.

But this one feels like a very well balanced, unisex, dry fig tea perfume. It’s like a less bitter sister to Nest Indigo (which I do really enjoy it’s just a tad too dry on me), and has a fresh citrus opening. In my experience fig perfumes tend to either be extremely fresh and summery, or very dry and heavy on the tea and woods, and this feels like a very nice balanced middle. Less dry than Fig Infusion or Gris Charnel for instance, but more apt for autumn and winter than Philosykos or Alluring Fig.

The dry down is a very pleasant and subtle woody skin scent, and it lasts all day on clothes, with very minimal projection, so I think this is a perfect work/public transportation scent. Overall I think this profile is great but idk if I’d pay Le Labo prices for it, so this works great for my budget!

Edit: forgot to add, I haven’t seen this comparison anywhere but this reminds me of a less musky version of Glossier You Doux. That one gets compared to Santal 33 a lot and while I do get the similarities, You Doux doesn’t smell like a creamy sandalwood, but a drier wood with some freshness to it. Which this does too! Smelling my travel size side by side and I can confidently say now that I have this I feel like I don’t need to get the full size of You Doux.

This perfume is beautiful, it’s not my style personally but I did want to review it for one thing: it performs incredibly. I have never tried a clean, aldehydic, fruity perfume that lasts so well.

I tried on my sample this morning, very lightly just one spray on each wrist. I then went swimming, showered (twice) put on a different perfume, and right now at the end of the day I keep getting wafts of Valaya, it’s insane. So even though I don’t love the scent profile, if you do, I think this is worth it for performance alone.

When I first smelled it I thought “oh no, not another Bianco Latte”. I didn’t even love Bianco Latte that much and somehow ended up with 2 very similar perfumes (that’s why you don’t blind buy, learn from my mistakes okay) already, I definitely didn’t need another one. After wearing it a ton this holiday season I am happy to report my original impression was oh so wrong. This is what I wish Bianco Latte was. It has that same kind of creamy cozy vanilla, but with a wonderful complexity rather than that linear artificial sweetness BL has. The pistachio does not smell too realistic to me but adds a very slight toasted-nuttiness to the scent, and on top of that the palo santo. In my opinion, palo santo really is the star of the show here, it's what makes it special. I love this note, it’s my favorite woody note, it’s so comforting and warm and really elevates a fragrance. But this is still very sweet. Extremely sweet, like wouldn't-wear-unless-it's-freezing-outside sweet. Heal the Way is very much like the inside a high end spa with vanilla candles burning all around. So lovely and a new winter staple.

Smokey woody perfume of my dreams. You know how growing up they made us think we’d have to be ready to switch our makeup from day to night at any moment? This is a day to night perfume for me. This is that same beautiful smokey palo santo that I love, the ebony note makes it super deep and woody as well, and the dry down is very subdued and elegant. Layer with anything else you own, especially light sweet gourmands, or fresh fruity perfumes, and get a deeper, woody, intoxicating combo. I'm usually against buying something just to layer, and I do love this on its own, but it's also wonderful to carry a travel spray of this and no matter what you're wearing during the day, this is great for a nighttime extra oomf. The first time I tried it it felt too masculine for me, and then for Christmas I got my dad a bottle of Tom Ford’s Ebene Fume and loved the scent too. I remembered reading this was a dupe so I got a decant, and I can confirm, they smell identical to me.

They really nailed it with the name, it smells exactly like hugging my dad! It made me smile so big when I first tried it. My dad does wear Gris Charnel a lot and the fig association might be just it. It’s perfectly unisex, non-sweet, just like a creamy fig aftershave kind of scent. I get mainly fig and iris, it's got this slightly metallic, soapy scent in the background, but the fig makes it more interesting than most soapy scents. It’s super cozy, super clean, and a great skin scent. It is a skin scent though at least on me, so it doesn’t project very much. But it’s a wonderful palette cleanser if you, like me, mostly have sweet scents and are looking for something more subdued for those days when you don’t feel like smelling like a pastry.