Messe de Minuit Etro 1994 Eau de Toilette

Messe de Minuit (Eau de Toilette) by Etro

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7.3 / 10243 Ratings

Messe de Minuit (Eau de Toilette) is a perfume by Etro for women and men and was released in 1994. The scent is spicy-smoky. The production was apparently discontinued.

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Perfumer

Jacques Flori

Fragrance Notes

Top Notes	Bergamot Orange Lemon
Heart Notes	Patchouli Lemon petitgrain Ceylon cinnamon Rose Frankincense
Base Notes	Labdanum Musk Myrrh

Ratings

Scent

7.3243 Ratings

Longevity

7.4187 Ratings

Sillage

6.7181 Ratings

Bottle

7.4173 Ratings

Value for money

7.211 Ratings

Submitted by Kankuro, last update on 25.11.2021.

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Reviews

07/13/2021

7.5
Scent 8
Longevity 7
Sillage 7
Bottle 7
Pricing

Wombatkönig

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Wombatkönig

Fragrance is not enough

"Messe de Minuit" recently came into my possession, blindly and as an impulse buy, during a shopping spree, because of the reasonable price.

At home first looked here, what I have actually brought me into the house: Auweia....Schon the name....Church, sacral.... i would have chosen better French in school.
Then also the classification as "spicy-smoky", the fragrance notes and extremely mixed reviews.

After I have resisted the first impulse to resell him unsprührt, "Messe de Minuit" was first put in the corner.

Today I sat through home office and waiting for a technician all day at home and am in a bad mood. Since now also the miserable weather prevented my planned foray through local perfumeries and thus the last spark of joy, today was the day. I had nothing left to lose. Brave grip him the corner. Here we go.

First associations: Cold bath, ginger (candies) and an unusual but not bad citrusy prelude. The prelude is citrusy-sweet, as I find not at all pungent.

"Messe de Minuit" is from the first moment clearly sweeter than I expected, the sweetness here is pleasantly round and not at all sticky. Like a nice spoonful of forest honey.
Even if it is not in the fragrance pyramid, I always imagine to smell out some ginger or its sharpness. The only thing here (incense) smoky is some incense; Since I expected more evil.
The scent is overall very natural, round and actually also very valuable.

"Messe de Minuit" has surprised me positively, even as I had feared him much more nasty and dusty. Probably he will leave me but still soon again.

"Messe de Minuit" is a fragrant little water. The question that remains in the end, however, is whether I want to smell like this.
It is as so often with Etro, it is shown that something goes and also craft impressive. Who comes on the idea to create a perfume after car tires? It has succeeded impressively with "Gomma". That's exactly how it is here. "Messe de Minuit" smells like midnight mass. DOT.
But - and this is a big "but" - ultimately a fragrance that can be worn on people has to come out, not an interesting studio fragrance. And that moves with such conceptions into the background. Many people will therefore probably not like such fragrances and the opportunities to wear them are even rarer. I would wear "Messe de Minuit" in any case twice a year, at Easter and Christmas - into the midnight mass.

Still, there's a happy ending: my wife - ignorant of the name - immediately said, accurately, "Church!" (Okay, we'll keep quiet about the accompanying snort, otherwise it wouldn't be a happy ending...)
Etro has thus achieved what they wanted - unfortunately at the price of everyday intolerance.

2 Replies

02/03/2021

Schellack

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Schellack

Very helpful Review 11

There are few perfumes where opinions clash as they do with Etro's "Fair".... Very entertaining!!

Reflects quite, what we have already come across to this.
My first thought when my wife tried on the fragrance was: "Smells like a first-class, mature Bordeaux, which unfortunately has a touch of cork", so already something of the highest class, like La Mission Haut-Brion 1989 or so, but just with Beiton. Or maybe - the priest has a passion for great wines and likes to treat himself to such a little glass in the sacristy. But the note is only strange with wine, otherwise "mass" is for us quite the elegant, somewhat heavier fragrance for the grand entrance, lace dressed evening gown, etc., but of course not in time. - but of course in no case in the temporal or local proximity of a wine tasting... and also otherwise to be dosed carefully. Even more so, where you can no longer get it.
So with shellacs now and then gladly smelled, and our friends we have also not yet managed to scare with it.
On the other hand: years ago, my wife was looking for (another) incense-heavy perfume. We enter a small, fine perfumery in the capital. A very competent and polite gentleman serves us. She recites her request, I want to be useful and throw in a "So maybe more intense incense than the Messe de Minuit". Suddenly - we are startled by a hair :-) - the friendly salesman flips on Snapchat (and from High German into dialect): "Messe de Minuit? I can't stand that. Net amal in d'Gruft derffns ma des nachschütten!!!" Well, fortunately he quickly calmed down again, and we finally left the shop satisfied with a flacon of Full Incense by Montal.
My wife appreciates the latter still very much, also the "fair" continues to be used with pleasure.

But the demonstration of the strong emotions that a perfume can trigger was already impressive!

4 Replies

10/29/2020

9.5
Scent 10
Longevity 7.5
Sillage 7.5
Bottle

JoHannes

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JoHannes

Top Review 27

It's not incense scent

No, it's not incense scent. Really, it's not. At least the current (the 3rd variation) of Messe de Minuit (eau de toilette) I have in front of me right now. While the first two variants were more scratchy and somehow, how should I say, more medieval and complex, denser, the current version is a fruity and yet darker scent.

A scent that always reminds me of a visit to the Isle of the Dead San Michele in the Venetian lagoon on November 1st, more than 10 years ago: it was a cold morning, the fog lay over the lagoon. Through the fog the sun was already shining and slowly dissolved the fog. Wafts of mist drifted out onto the lagoon. And through these wafts of mist we looked for the way to the graves of Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky. From time to time autumn flowers were still blooming. Then again a grave with a fresh bouquet of flowers. And again and again this iridescent play between sun and fog, which also reminds me of Stravinsky's music. Bulky beauties.

Messe de Minuit (Eau de Toilette) begins with a citric and slightly acidic overture, to which patchouli is added. Patchouli, as it is used for example in the Héritage (Eau de Toilette) by Guerlain. Present but friendly. And rose. A late and strong rose. All this sweetened with cinnamon.

Soon, however, the solo oboe enters the sceptre in the form of a radiant myrrh. Present, dark myrrh, which has something fruity in its appearance. The second oboe is labdanum, which takes this rubbery chord from the myrrh. Together with the orchestral instruments (lemon, patch, rose, cinnamon) a work that is always touching for me.

No, it's not incense scent. It's a myrrh fragrance. With sacred echoes throughout, when I think of some visit to a small Romanesque church somewhere in Burgundy after a mass. The cool, damp walls and the smells that were smoked in the boiler and that hang in the brickwork and the wooden chairs.

Messe de Minuit (Eau de Toilette) was my entry into my niche fragrance collection. A fragrance that always works when nothing works anymore - and: it was sold to me as incense! ;-)

15 Replies

10/10/2018

3
Scent 7
Longevity 7
Sillage 6
Bottle

FabianO

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FabianO

Aggressive, cocoa-phonic scissors - biting sour lemon meets cool-scratchy incense

Possibly one must wait really with it, until 24.12. is, in order to be able to apply "fair de Minuit" adequately. But even then, Catholicism is also an obligatory part of this, as is the tolerance of its fellow men to approve of this quite unwieldy Etro scent in its immediate vicinity at the Feast of Feasts.

I mean, there are quite a lot of conditions to fulfill and I still smile about the total teardown of CdG below, already 8 years old, which brings the pissed off parsonage toilet into play.

No, something doesn't fit together at all here, and I mean it's the brute spreading of aromas that "Messe de Minuit" does to you.

That incense and myrrh must occur at Christmas - good, given. Cinnamon still sticking to your fingers, left over from afternoon gingerbread food? Also within the framework of the Reellen.

But what these piercing, crosswise lemony, orange notes are supposed to do is not clear to me.
It bites itself blatantly with the sacred smokiness and, in combination with the somewhat stony coldness of the smoke aromas, actually has something bizarre about it, which Klostein evokes as an association, and indeed "on the spot", somewhere between two central doors, the fair incense blowing in - the WC vapours wafting out, strongly mixed with these citric, cutting cleaner aromas.

No, even after an hour it doesn't get better, but the energetic, sour, woven through with the cool scratchy myrrh/incense mixture, is simply terrible.

You'd better make up your mind on Christmas Eve. Either for a beautiful, mythical, coherent incense ("Gucci I", "Epic Man") or correspondingly aesthetic myrrh ("Myrrhe Imperial") or at the end for something cosy and comfortable ("Grand Soir"). With this Etro, the festival could be a belly landing.

7 Replies

11/18/2016

9.5
Scent 8
Longevity 8
Sillage 8
Bottle

Fanny
66 Reviews

Fanny

L'Infini

The beauty of magic is there is no definition for it.
Easier to say what it is not: There is no burden, no guilt, no heaviness.
There is light, air, history without regrets and maybe an infinite future, which is already here around us.

Wonderful job to have put all this in a bottle.

07/04/2014

7.5
Scent

Mujo
48 Reviews

Mujo

Very helpful Review 4

Natural smelling myrrh

Messe de Minuit is around for 20 years, but I just recently had the pleasure in trying it, and I'm immediately sold. This is an awesome myrrh fragrance.

The first spray felt almost like liquorice, but in such a nice perfumy way that I don't mind at all. After that it settles down into a most lovely myrrh fragrance which is complemented by the other notes such as citrus. It feels churchy, but in a diluted way. It doesn't remind me of christmas or basements like it does to other reviewers. Not musty at all to my nose. It's just an amazing fragrance that does remind me of churches and is somewhat gloomy, but makes me happy at the same time. I love it.

Longevity and sillage are medium in my second take of the Eau the Cologne version.

03/29/2014

9
Scent 7.5
Longevity 7.5
Sillage

Insense
25 Reviews

Insense

Very helpful Review 7

Incensed Memories

Is there a path to one’s holy grail in perfumery? And why did I feel incense notes would drive me closer?

Perfumes with that incense related notes have awaken inside me lost memories: with Comme Des Garçons’s Kyoto I revisited images of playing when a kid alone in the company of cypresses, some smoke being felt in the distance coming from my family home, in an ending winter wet sunday. Or got me to an altered state of mind: L’Artisan’s Timbuktu transported me to the future - my place of desire, the mythic Timbuktu, where I want to be one day. So, past and future can appear in my present just by picking my scent of the day.

But, the ultimate incensed experience came with Etro’s Messe de Minuit. The name "Messe de Minuit" had all to be a devastating crush in the longing and missing memories of my childhood: family in christmas excursion to church at midnight. Our church always was presenting that time the sculpted Machado de Castro*’s Nativity Scene…And when I sprayed the first drops on my neck and wrists, I was not prepared to the overwhelm I fell afterwards. It was the first time I felt closer to perfection in perfumery, this meaning in a rush being in the past, meditation break, traveling to a place of interior regrets, and nostalgia of the forever lost innocence.

Just perfumes, but not only perfumes. Memories that we carry with us, most of the time sleeping inside our sub-conscient, should be awakened or should be left in quiet peace and forgotten?

Patchouli perfection. Nothing more to say now.

*Machado de castro was a portuguese sculptor in the 18th century.

1 Replies

11/10/2012

7
Scent 7.5
Longevity 7.5
Sillage

Missk
1165 Reviews

Missk

Helpful Review 2

Oriental deliciousness

Incense, amber, patchouli and myrrh are some of my favourite notes. I'm a sucker for anything dense, woody, spicy or resinous. Messe de Minuit was predestined to become part of my collection.

Where I live, the Winter months are cold, windy and rather dull. Heavy orientals tend to provide the warmth that I crave and desire during this season. A direct translation of Messe de Minuit is midnight mass. Okay, forgive me Christians, but this fragrance isn't religious or 'churchy' to my nose whatsoever. It's an exotic blend of spices and resinous woods, with a drizzle of honey. I would wear this fragrance through the gates of hell or even to entice my lover on a night where passion was particularly desirable.

A unisex fragrance, it is indeed. I dare say a man would smell intoxicating while wearing Messe de Minuit. I probably wouldn't be able to tear myself away from him. But mind you, it's hard to resist myself sometimes in this beautiful elixir. Animalistic is another great word used to describe Messe de Minuit's magic.

It is so deliciously spicy on my skin, that it leans occasionally towards being a gourmand. It smells almost as good as a Christmas cake laced with rum and raisins. Actually many reviewers have noted its somewhat 'Christmasey' feel.

I'm loving Messe de Minuit, and it's only my first day of wearing it. The longevity is superb, as is the sillage, and on that note, please apply this fragrance sparingly as it does sit on the skin rather strongly. I've always wanted to explore the Etro range, but I've left it rather late. I'm glad we're getting acquainted now.