Indeed, perhaps the only exceptional thing about Alaïa is how well it performs in spite of its overall breezy composition; I think the musk is what pulls everything together, and it's certainly what lasts longest and dominates the drydown. If I had to describe this smell to someone, I'd say it smells like a living room in a mountain cottage filled with flowers - you feel the mountain air, the woody and leathery smell, but at the same time you are embraced by the floral notes. Interesting combination of freesia along with the leather, musk and pepper notes makes the whole composition a lot lighter and brighter than an aromatic Fougere.

The work for true connoisseurs and gourmets of niche perfumery, with the echoes of skin, fragrant in the hot air of Tunisia, where Alaia was born, fascinates with the combination of the incongruous. I read a lot of people are dissapointed, beacuse they thought that tis scent would be oriental, but why is that? Based on the reviews and note pyramid, I expected this to be very leather-forward, but on me it's really not. Peonie, viole e fresie, rese brillanti da pepe rosa e coriandolo, si posano su un letto di muschio e cuoio, non cupo, vellutato e sensuale.The review about it resembling a bouquet of peonies and violets tied up with a suede bow sold me, and is spot on. Through our longstanding contacts in the world of perfume – perfumers, bottle designers, brand creators, the fashion designers who have their names on some of the world’s bestselling scents – we have our finger on the pulse-point of everything that’s happening – and we are delighted to share it with you here. It is somewhat reminiscent of vintage scents but sounds modern, not heavy, not chypre, not overwhelming. I smell water and get faint impressions of florals other than violet but after extensive wear I lean towards a Chanel No:19.

Then it becomes "pefumey" if that is an appropriate description, freesia and peony, and then it gets fresher with iris and mountain air. It's like the less lived-in, better blended, watercolor-floral version of a Narciso Rodriguez musk perfume. I still haven't decided whether I like it or not, but it does have something different from the others. And it’s ever so slightly reminiscent of L’eau d’Issey, of course less aquatic and citrusey, but similar in vibe. Alaia smells to me like satin soaked in clean thawing snow, a batch of Violet candy forming a cloud of mist of some typical light 90's (ck?Maybe it's that aquatic-fresh-musk part of "Curious" - it's admittedly been decades since I've smelled Curious, so take my scent memory with a grain of salt. At some point, when the saltiness of the fragrance started to bother me and made me think that it's absolutely out of place in this composition, I remembered the initial image the perfumer wanted to express - water poured on hot stones. Now 30 minutes later the pepper is completely gone and all I'm getting is a light, fresh-but-sweet aquatic-floral-clean-musk skin scent. But it's the base notes, in my opinion, that really are the main stars of this show, and that really make this perfume the work of a master: how could a perfume have leathery notes in such a beautiful, seductive, feminine way, without smelling brute or masculine?