Mystic Elixir

Mystic Elixir has the longest note list in the range and, unusually for a budget fragrance, mostly manages to hold it together. The opening is genuinely distinctive: coconut arrives first, creamy rather than suntan-lotion sweet, with plum and apricot adding a soft stone-fruit juiciness behind it. Anise cuts across the fruit with a cool liquorice edge, and rosewood sits underneath giving the whole opening a slightly waxy, floral-woody texture. Very few fragrances at this price attempt five top notes and fewer still make them legible. The heart is a large white floral bouquet, jasmine and tuberose leading, rose and lily of the valley filling in, and heliotrope adding the same powdery almond quality that runs through several fragrances in this range. It is dense and a little indistinct, and this is where the cheapness of the materials shows most. The base recovers: vanilla, sandalwood and musk make a warm, creamy, softly powdery drydown that lasts better than the mini format usually allows, giving four to five hours overall. It is a cold-weather fragrance almost entirely. In warmth the coconut and heavy florals turn cloying within the hour, but on a winter evening the tropical fruit and vanilla combination is genuinely comforting. The best of the brand's travel-size sprays.