Let's have a little fig-off.
...That sounds both perplexing and dirty!
For today's review, I've picked out a couple of fig perfumes I enjoy--these are both fig-centric, but very, very different from one another.
First up, we have:
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Gomorrah
Price: $17.50 for a 5 mL bottle of perfume oil
Samples: Available for $4.00 or as part of a 6-pack for $22.
Shipping: See our company overview post about Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab for more details about their shipping policies.
Description from the website: "One of the Biblical Cities on the Plain, destroyed by God with fire and brimstone because of its people’s pride, prosperous ease, deceit, hedonism and indolence, and their callous, uncharitable hearts. A gritty, sordid and languid scent: ripe fig, date and currant with black herbs."
And, in the other corner:
Diptyque Philosykos
Price: $88 for a 50 mL bottle of eau de toilette, $120 for a 100 mL bottle of EDT, $55 for a 7.5 mL roll-on of perfume oil, $48 for a 4.5 g solid perfume, or $140 for a 75 mL bottle of eau de parfum. Note that this brand occasionally goes on sale on Hautelook for half off.
Samples: Only available with purchase from Diptyque, but you can purchase decants from places like The Perfumed Court or Luckyscent.
Shipping: Multiple UPS options are available, starting from $7.77 to ship a solid perfume within the US via UPS Ground. Shipping is free for orders over $75. I am unclear on Diptyque's international shipping options, but the site has dropdown selections for the UK and France, so I assume you can at least ship to those two countries.
Description from the website: "In the heat of a Greek summer, “to get to the sea,” recalls Yves, “you had to walk through a natural orchard of wild fig trees.” Returning from Paris, Desmond brought back a few leaves of these trees in a little box. Years later, the leaves had lost none of their fragrance. Philosykos, which in Greek means “friend of the fig tree,” is an ode to the entire tree: the green, pungent freshness of the leaves, the wood warmed in the sun, the milky flavor of the fruit."
My thoughts:
Gomorrah has a thick, herbal, almost medicinal camphor quality when wet that fades a bit as it dries down. It has heavy helpings of dirt and vetiver, and the fig smells dried, dark, sticky, chewy, combining with the date and currant to give an overall impression of dark, spicy incense--"languid" is accurate.
Though it has a certain sweetness from the fruit, it doesn't come across to me as a sweet scent; it's dry and earthy, dirty and mysterious. The fig note that I love becomes more prominent the longer I have the scent on my skin--it starts to smell like black figs rolled in leaves and stems and dirt, woody and ever-so-slightly green.
Philosykos is the other end of the fig spectrum. It goes on pleasant, fresh, and green, with a bright grassy topnote that smells like new foliage crushed between your fingers. The fruitiness of the fresh fig note and the slightly bitter chlorophyll grassiness is constantly tempered by an underlying chord of dry, warm wood and something very faintly milky-smelling, but it remains a fresh, cheerful bright green scent overall.
The description of it as "an ode to the entire tree" seems pretty accurate to me: I can smell all the components named in the scent description, and they meld into a harmonious and beautiful whole.
It wears on with its fresh green notes for a surprisingly long time, given that it's an EDT--I can smell it lingering after a whole day.
Philosykos is my favorite fig scent, and one of my favorite perfumes overall, which I'm kind of sorry about given the price--I very seldom spend so much on perfume, but I bought a sample of this at some point, fell in love, used it up, and ended up finally springing for the pricey bottle of EDT when I saw it on sale on Hautelook.
So, here are two fig scents: one gnarled and dark, earthy and sexy; one fresh and sunny, creamy and green. I love smelling different, opposing interpretations of a single note like this. Have you tried either of these scents? Which version of "fig" appeals to you more? What are your favorite fig perfumes?
(A couple others I like: L'Artisan Perfumer Premier Figuier and Pacifica Mediterranean Fig--these are both more straightforward and similar to Philosykos in composition and approach, though neither is as green and bright to my nose--fresh fig and fig leaves, wood notes, milky smooth sap. The Pacifica perfume in particular is an excellent cheap thrill, and a pretty little tin of the solid perfume lives permanently in my travel toiletries bag.)
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