Secret Mélange (1988)
by Maître Parfumeur et Gantier

There is something really mysterious about SM...it's a clove based scent yes..but there is a "X" factor in there...something tht my nose cant pick but my senses can feel...theres a lot going in here behind the wall of freshly grinded "Cloves" the image tht comes to mind is takin handful of cloves and rubbing it against a stone covered with moss...the journey fro mMid to basenotes is again one of the smoothest accords i have ever sniffed. pure class.

caltha is very right whn he said it reminds him of Hammam Bouquet..how apt...they don't smell similar atall...but its in the raw true nature of the accords that gives off the feeling its been made ages...or maybe centuries before...not an ordinary scent. For someone looking for "that" mysetrious scent...look no further.

Feels very vintage with its powdery/soapy/aldehydic, rich, warm and slightly musty (not in a bad way, mind you) rendition of a clove-studded orange. I think I get a whiff of nutmeg too, but not much else. Definitely a gentleman's scent but I'm not sure why - because it feels barbershoppy with its soap and citrus notes? Because it lacks the sweetness to make it into an equally vintage-feeling ladies' oriental? Anyway, I quite like the old-fashioned quality, it reminds me of scents like Creed's Ambre Cannelle, Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet, Guerlain's Habit Rouge and even Old Spice... It's been a while since I smelled bay rum, but I think there are similarities there too...

Interesting. Reminds me of Paco Rabanne pour Homme but with a Ungaro I or II undertone to it. lavender with a huge moss. I haven't tried many of the other MPG's but this one is interesting. I think disliked this one at first but it's the most intriguing orange spicy and moss fragrance I've encountered.

What an odd scent, I tried it and was thrown for a loop with the spicy orange opening, and then it began to smell like a n orange spice potpourri my wife likes around the holidays. Didn't work on my skin.

Never blind buy this stuff!!

For the first hour I wore it, I smelled nothing but the cloves, and I felt rather like one of those clove-studded apple pomanders hanging in a closet. It eventually dimmed down to a sweet, less-specific spiciness. I think this would be a great perfume to layer with some others, but it IS more single-note than I expected from the description.

It strikes me as one of the strangest fragrances from MPG that I’ve encountered so far. Strange in the sense that it doesn’t seem like something MPG would make. Unlike many of the other MPG’s, it lacks any kind of drama or panache or even identity. It’s just an odor: not pleasant and not disagreeable not subtle not aggressive … it’s just there with a smell that reminds several people, myself included, of bathrooms. It seems like something Demeter would make: a plain linear scent—no movement, no progression, and no nuance—a copy of an interesting random olfactory occurrence (Demeter picks more interesting random olfactory occurrences than the bathroom accord in Secret Mélange). This particular mélange is one with a predominance of cloves supported by some lavender and some lemony orange and something burned—probably the patchouli. That’s it; that’s all there is: On my skin it is just a ho-hum odor. Certainly not a bad fragrance, but, after an hour or two of smelling it, I’m basically thinking: “What’s the point?” Perhaps Secret Mélange should have remained a secret.