Replica - Soul of the Forest 2016

Replica - Soul of the Forest by Maison Margiela
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7.6 / 10 246 Ratings
A popular perfume by Maison Margiela for women and men, released in 2016. The scent is woody-green. It was last marketed by L'Oréal.
Pronunciation
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Main accords

Woody
Green
Resinous
Spicy
Earthy

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes Top Notes
Blackcurrant budBlackcurrant bud MossMoss PimentoPimento
Heart Notes Heart Notes
Fir balsamFir balsam Cistus concreteCistus concrete Plant juicePlant juice
Base Notes Base Notes
Atlas cedarAtlas cedar FrankincenseFrankincense Indonesian patchouliIndonesian patchouli

Perfumer

Ratings
Scent
7.6246 Ratings
Longevity
6.9210 Ratings
Sillage
6.6209 Ratings
Bottle
7.7207 Ratings
Value for money
6.858 Ratings
Submitted by multiple users, last update on 24.04.2024.

Reviews

10 in-depth fragrance descriptions
8
Sillage
6
Longevity
7.5
Scent
Stanze

101 Reviews
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Stanze
Stanze
Top Review 27  
Smell yourself nice
Maison Martin Margiela means something to me because I once met Mr Margiela in Normandy. He didn't buy the castle I was guarding, he bought another castle in Belgium. (And it was my fault again.) That's the short version of the story. Of course I found it impressive to show someone around who has their own Wikipedia article in several languages. He was nice and unspectacular. According to tradition, you don't look at the richest people for their money.

He will have nothing to do with this fragrance, except that the fashion house, from whose shops he withdrew years ago, still bears his name. I was still curious about the scents of his house.

I still know Wald well from my childhood in the Harz Mountains. I therefore always think that I must like the smell of the forest.

Enthusiastic I tried the perfume today after work and was immediately terribly disappointed. The top note told me nothing and when it had disappeared (quickly) I smelled liquorice. There's no liquorice at all in there. It had to be another puzzle smell. I sprayed after and didn't wait when the scent had disappeared. Then the wooden scents came to the fore, especially the cedar, but the incense lay like a wet sack over everything. With good will it smelled of damp earth and rotting wood.

Then I had the family tester M. testriechen. He said I'd have to spray it on. I sprayed after and smelled forest instead of liquorice in the meantime. I smelled the perfume nice. M claimed there was no liquorice, it smelled great like cedar and he would be sprayed later. The more intensive components are for me: the fir balm, the cedar and unfortunately the incense. Frankincense is usually a bit sweaty or overblown, at least something that starts with "schw" (dizzy, heavy, dizzy). Others obviously don't smell it that way, but find it "great", even on me. Otherwise, I think I should just let incense be, but if you always get such positive feedback. Sighs in the woods.

The scent already lasts a few hours and the projection I find quite tidy. Quite an incense cloud. In contrast to many people I find that incense does not smell like smoke, but just like incense. In my teenage years I used to burn incense (I was a hippie), actually it's rather an incandescence and he doesn't smoke much (yes, altar boys say the opposite, but I didn't have a church at home). I associate smoke with a wood fire, food roasted by Jamie Oliver or a house fire because of me. Smoke that triggers a fire alarm. The attempt to burn paper in a wood-burning stove or wet leaves on branches that are also wet. For me, incense is more incense than smoke, say: resinous.

Compared to "Falling Trees" by Régime des Fleurs, I found Soul of the Forest less wooded and more swish, but Soul of the Forest costs much less and you don't have to go to customs if you bought the perfume. Maybe I will be convinced of Soul of the Forest if I have tested it often enough.

In my opinion Soul of the Forest is not for summer, more for men and more for evenings and leisure. But that's for everyone to know. Because of me, women can wear it at work in the summer, too, and I won't drag them into a shower anyway.
10 Comments
10
Bottle
8
Sillage
8
Longevity
10
Scent
MiriamHa

14 Reviews
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MiriamHa
MiriamHa
Top Review 34  
What counts in the end...
I've noticed over the last eight years on Parfumo and beyond that there's so much more you can test, at some point you get to the point where you focus on the essentials. I have tested hundreds of fragrances over the years, far more than I have written down here. Some I found so insignificant that it was not worth writing them down, others so convincing that I didn't need to write them down. At the moment my collection consists of 11 fragrances and 14 bottlings, I didn't update that here either, I know that sometimes bottlings disappear quite fast. So every day I have the choice between 25 fragrances and I have to say that even that is too much for me. Why? Because I think I could do with just five fragrances to cover what is essentially the essence. Sure, one day you move in with someone you've missed for a long time, but another one leaves with someone you're not in the mood for anymore. But the essence remains, in my eyes at least, that less is clearly more. For me there are four important categories: Christmas scents, incense, forest, amber. Of course there are several beauties within the categories, for example, I recently replaced "Ambre Précieux" with "Peau d'Ambre". Not forever, but simply because I don't think it needs several amber scents next to each other. Just like it basically needs only one from each of my categories. It can be changed at will, sure. But this madness with 30, 40, 100 scents I won't go along with anymore. I'm slowly using up my scents, not replacing them. There are few who can stay. One of them is Soul of the Forest. Why? Because it smells of the forest as I know and love it. In my student days I got up at 6 a.m. every morning to go for a walk in the forest. I loved it, especially in winter. When the trees smell frosty cool and sublime, when nature is able to stop time in picturesque dignity. When fir trees shine in all their glory and squirrels bury their last supplies, when robins sing on snowy branches, when you decorate your home with mistletoe. A few sprayers and I'm right where I like to be. In the soul of the forest
9 Comments
MossGreen

21 Reviews
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MossGreen
MossGreen
Top Review 16  
Soul of the forest? Not at all.
So...I was allowed to test this scent, from which I had hoped for a lot, now extensively (thanks at this point) and I must say, he left me a little disappointed back.
I've just made it my passion to find the most authentic forest scents.
Since the fewest are suitable for the warmer seasons, I was all the more excited about this one.
Pepper, currant... Yes, that's exactly how it smells from the beginning... Only that this currant has never seen a shrub before and the fir balm, which turns on quite soon,
only very distant something to do with fir trees.

After a short time, when I was eagerly awaiting the heart note, a slightly sour, almost bitter tone mixed into the chord, and instead of catching the slightly tangy/synthetic opening, even more high-speed notes were whirled up.
The floral note misses its mitigating use here, bobbers for my nose inexpressively and slightly sweetly into the composition and even takes the whole thing in depth, but also, and I have to say this to her credit, bitterness.

Much too late the base starts with a little warmer-softer, more woody discreet sweet... But actually not on the skin, but only in the fabric of my sweater.

This fragrance is now wonderfully harmonious and even with some imagination to classify as "woody". But I don't want a fragrance that makes the sweater, which now belongs in the laundry, smell wonderful on the sleeve.

I felt like I was standing at Douglas...freshly waffled by slightly alcoholic, wildly mixed head notes. They just don't want to resign.

Remark of my husband during his walk (unaware that I just applied a >60€ perfume): "why is everyone using the same cheap fabric softener?"

A quite straightforward experience, not bad, quite pleasant to wear but with a forest the whole thing has quite little to do. Calling the scent the soul of it almost borders on presumption.
Rather the soul of a juice spritzer with more or less natural flavors and plenty of carbon dioxide.

Too bad...

11 Comments
10
Bottle
8
Sillage
6
Longevity
8.5
Scent
Yharnam79

62 Reviews
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Yharnam79
Yharnam79
Top Review 9  
Soul of the Forest on your skin, Wostok fir forest shower in your hand and everything around it is forgotten!
I'm a big fan of what we call "natural scents." It was the forest theme that particularly appealed to me. I like Vert de Bois and Vert d' Encens very, very much and Macaque also joins my favourites list. When I read the fragrance pyramid, it was already clear that I was on fire to get this fragrance under my nose. What should I say a very good decision (though not for the purse).

THAT is truly a forest scent!
Fir and cedar, moist smoky green in various facets and woods dominate here. For a change, not too much incense fumes waft like fog over the moss and wood-covered ground. Even a very light and wonderfully musty patchouli is perceptible and every now and then a slightly bitter sweetness flashes up (which is probably due to the black currant). In itself a cool and pleasant fragrance.
In the process, the green withdraws minimally from me, so that the fragrance becomes smokier and woodier in itself. On the whole, however, it settles in quite quickly.

Now to my only but nevertheless important point of criticism: the durability really borders on impudence. Already after 5-10 minutes the fragrance experience decreases rapidly. After 15 - 20 minutes only a hint of the fragrance remains. I feel that this is an enormous shortcoming; on the one hand because of the price, on the other hand because it really takes away the joy of this otherwise so great fragrance when you feel the need to replenish it every quarter of an hour. I have never experienced such a bad durability before. At least I don't remember it.

Conclusion:
Soul Of The Forest is a calm, almost meditative and yet strong character and self-confident fragrance. Also the name could not be chosen more suitable here.
I don't want to make a direct comparison as there are huge differences but from a basic point of view Soul Of the Forest is for me something like the rougher, more masculine and more serious brother of Vert d' Encens.
An incredibly charismatic, round and yet differentiated forest scent, which unfortunately suffers from its subterranean durability.
2 Comments
7
Pricing
7
Bottle
6
Sillage
6
Longevity
7.5
Scent
GGaukeley

5 Reviews
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GGaukeley
GGaukeley
Top Review 11  
There used to be more fir!

When I was a child, there was an annual competition between my father and my uncle at Christmas for the most beautiful Christmas tree.

While we had a fir tree every time, my uncle's house had a spruce tree every year. Both trees were splendidly and affectionately decorated and my uncle always used much time on it extra still branches and Zweiglein to attach additionally into holes drilled for it around the tree more fullly to let work. At the spruce hung also always tinsel, which was already frowned upon with our fir in the 70s.

On Christmas Day now traditionally came my uncle with family to us, big hello, gifts were exchanged, coffee, punch and cookies. The tree was admired, great, so straight grown and "fat", and how the smells, madness! And then every year the sentence from the Loriot sketch came grinning from my uncle: "There used to be more tinsel!"

On Boxing Day then always took place our return visit, big hello, coffee, beer and snack. The tree was admired. The comments of my father were always about so: Bit crooked he is already... There he has but quite a gap... Ui, the nadelt already... Who did not know the two would have considered that as quite tactlessness, we grinned at us and knew that it was the usual Frotzeleien between brothers who liked each other very much.

With Soul of the Forest, that childhood memory comes back to me. I grew up near the woods, almost every farm in the neighborhood had a piece of "woods", that is, a forest plot. There was also a state forest nearby. The fir tree in the living room at Christmas was beautiful and smelled very good, but compared to the trees and smells outside in the real big forest, it always seemed small and a bit intentional. Not to mention my uncle's spruce ;)

Soul of the Forest has a similar effect on me. Unmistakable fir, wood, resin, something earthy. But rather as if a tree has been standing in the warm living room for a long time and becomes dry. Or standing next to a pile of logs that have been there for a while on a cool day in the forest. That smells really good, but does not embody the soul of the forest for me.
A bit I must also criticize the weak sillage. At me, the fragrance after an hour is already very close to the skin what I find a bit of a shame. Nevertheless, I absolutely recommend a test if you are looking in the direction of "forest fragrance".
4 Comments
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Statements

1 short view on the fragrance
ItchynoseItchynose 4 years ago
8
Bottle
6
Sillage
5
Longevity
7.5
Scent
A walk in the woods after the rain: just like a Zoologist creation minus the anthropomorphic animal.
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