New Le Male Elixir Bottle smells horrible?!

Hello my dear Parfumo Community,

yesterday finally my brand new bottle of Le Mâle Elixir arrived and hastily and full of anticipation I sprayed some sprays on my arm.

Quite quickly I was confused as the Mint and Lavender was so sharp, so spicy even burning my nose quite a bit that it was quite unpleasant. Very different from a Tester I still have and which I really love.

The development of the fragrance was like a farce, a poor shadow of the tester I have. Very inhamonius. The beginning way to harsh and loud with this horrible overtuned Mint and Lavender. Then an unbalanced sweetness with some weird smell to it and in the end it lasted way shorter then the tester.

And again I absolutely love the tester. There all the accords work together beautifully and with the new bottle It's just an unpleasant mess.

Now my question. The bottle contains the Batch 40301 with the production date 2024-01-30. So it's quite fresh.

Do I just have to let the bottle ripe a bit and Maceration will give me the amazing fragrance I know?

Or did I get a bad Bottle/Batch and should I try to return it?

I am pretty sure it's an original bottle as I bought it from a respectable online store and it was still sealed with the same Batch Number on the package and on the bottle.

Thanks community!

By accident, I just tested it for the first time 2 hours ago

It's an official tester from the store, bought perhaps several months ago.

It was horrible at the beginning, I felt nauseous. Funnily, I checked the reviews here, and the one just below yours describes well how I and that person feel about it. He also used the word "inharmonious", just like you did now. An hour and something later, it became much more tolerable. But while he finds it appealing, I find it dull. Yes, it's slightly different than tons of other contemporary sweet fragrances, but I just am already tired of them at this point.

I don't think I helped you, though. Perhaps you tested it in different conditions (season? indoor/outdoors) the last time? Sometimes we react differently to the same smell, but it looks like the change is quite radical in your case. I think you should search for an older batch for comparison. It's a popular fragrance, I am sure you won't struggle much to find it.

A little update: It's been 3 hours or so now, and it's almost a skin scent already. I tested Invictus Platinum simultaneously on the other hand. At first, Elixir expectedly obliterated it in terms of sillage, but Invictus has weakened just a bit since the opening, and now they are about the same.