Odyssey 89

Odyssey 89 takes on Mugler's Alien, a fragrance built around just three notes and famous for making each one count. The structure here follows the same path: a bold jasmine sambac opening, a cashmeran heart, and an amber base, which is a faithful reduction of the original's minimalist formula. The jasmine is where the biggest gap shows - Alien's jasmine is often described as solar and almost supernatural, radiant and commanding in a way that doesn't smell like typical florals, and Odyssey 89's version is softer and more conventionally sweet, missing some of that hypnotic intensity. The cashmeran and amber still deliver a warm, woody-sweet base that carries the general mood of Alien reasonably well. Longevity is decent for a dupe of this style, holding a warm jasmine-amber character for a good stretch of the day before fading into a gentle skin scent, well short of Alien's legendary all-day-and-then-some performance. A reasonable way to explore whether the jasmine-cashmeran-amber combination works for you, without the original's room-filling sillage.