Trilli4n4

On my skin, Mokaya opens with strong dark patchouli, but the patchouli only stays protagonis for a few minutes, after that it steps back and softly lingers on. Sweetness starts to sparkle through and lifts up the initial heavyness. A creamy tobacco comes to life, along with the sweets. At this point the fragrance on my skin is like an exotic, warm, sweet tea on a rainy afternoon. An embracing warm blanket. It´s inviting and intriguing, it projects just enough to make you want to lean closer to it and explore more. The blend is so complex that it will keep your attention captured as it changes. It is a sexy scent but not in a cheep way, it isnt intoxicating and alluring, it´s captivating and inviting but it doesn´t reveal itself too soon. It remains mysterious, delightful and intimate. A deeply erotic, oriental scent, leaning rather feminine to my nose.

The fragrance opens with a blast of lemon, followed by the flowers that start to slowly simmer to the foreground. The dominant fresh citrus scent is persistent for 10 to 20 minutes. After the citrus has somewhat calmed down, I notice some light spices along the flowers. Half hour in, a very clean jasmine blooms up and forms a beautiful mix with the lemon on my skin. The flowers give the lemon a mysterious depth. Subsequently the scent becomes smooth, almost creamy. At the 3 hours mark it starts to fade on my skin and turns slightly powdery. It lasts about 4 to 5 hours on me. All in all it is a lovely fresh fragrance with juicy lemon and creamy flowers blended in such a masterful way, that I can almost listen in to the conversation between the ingredients on my skin. It is perfectly unisex and has a quite strong projection.

This perfume has been a surprise and a very interesting revelation.
The opening is sharp citrusy and fresh, but after five -or-so minutes the flowers start to bloom up and tame the citrus, which however, still reminds me slightly of toilet refreshener. By the 20 minutes mark that has faded out. It became much more Chanel like, with elegant aldehydes and clean flowers. At that point I have decided it was not for me, but eventually found myself coming back to it again and again. It reminded me of something... Something nice... What was it?
And then it has downed on me and left me wondering how our brain imprints on certain smells and even if we never smell them again for ages, it stays there in our memory, latent but alive. It´s quite remarkable. My daughter was born in Spain, and apparently it is costumary there to give out the baby perfumed when leaving the hospital. The perfume they used is called Nenuco, and it was a citrusy flower scent, special for babies. It was unexpected for me back then, quite a bit of culture shock too, but they didn´t ask me, so there it was, my Nenuco scented baby. When we got home I found that I somehow imprinted on that smell and eventually had to buy it, eventhough I was totally against the idea of putting perfume on babies, but at that point I found I needed it for a little while. (Good, albeit a little forced marketing, I suppose) I bought a bottle - they are quite inexpensive and are sold in very simple plastic bottles. This is what Chanel Riviera reminds me of. The classic Nenuco. My freshly baked newborn daughter. (She´s 17 by now.) That is why I found it almost addictive while testing. I´m not sure how much my scent memory is cheating on me here, but next time I´m in Spain I plan to buy a bottle of nenuco and compare these two again.

A densely sweet scent. On my skin besides the chocolate, I also smell a touch of overly sweet rose, tobacco and boozy cognac too. To me it´s more of a masculine leaning fragrance. Like an evening at a club. I see it more on my man than on myself. I think I´d like it more if it wouldn´t be for the cloyingly sweet rose in it.

*Update*: I definetely love it on my husband. Everything that I didn´t like about this perfume on myself, I love on him and he likes it quite a bit too. I´m getting him a whole bottle! :)

I am trying, but I can´t befriend myself with PDM perfumes. I was hopeful Cassili would change that, but it didn´t. It feels childish, too fruty for my taste, quite a bit unsophisticated. I miss the finesse, the evolution. It´s just a sweet fruitpunch all the way through, not unpleasent, although after 2 hours it turns rather sour on my skin, which is quickly tiering, even borderline boring. I can´t take it seriously, at least not as seriously as the pricetag would suggest. It´s a no for me.