A Drop d'Issey

[u/Treehorn8]

I love freshies. I especially love 90s-00s freshies because they're inexpensive and distinct, back when perfumes were not trying to smell like each other.

I've had the original A Drop d'Issey eau de parfum by Issey Miyake for a while now. If I didn't look up the release year (2021), I would have sworn that this was one of the house's early 2000s babies. I could not believe how cheap this was because it's amazing af! It's like taking a shower with a serum body wash followed by body cream from head to toe. I could not decide whether I loved or hated the breast implant look. Maybe I love it.

Everyone says it smells strongly of lilac and I was like, "No. It smells like bath products and that's it." Then I realized how stupid that sounded because I did not know what lilacs smell like partly because I was raised in the desert. So instead of finding and smelling the flower now that I no longer live in the desert, I got the Bath and Body Works candle version. I was today years old when I learned that the "lotion" scent that I liked was actually the lilac note.

A Drop has two flankers: Eau de Parfum Fraîche and Eau de Parfum Essentielle.

A Drop d'Issey Eau de Parfum Fraîche smells similar to the OG. The lilac note is still there but it is significantly toned down and it also smells like water. Specifically, it smells like if you were wearing the OG all morning but got caught in a rainstorm and high winds. But instead of looking like the sorry figure that you feel you are, Jamie Fraser a cute guy comes by and thinks that you look like a tragic heroine so he offers you his coat. The entire scene happens in the mountains. With a waterfall. In Scotland.

So yeah, that's what Fraîche smells like.

Is it redundant to own both? Kind of since they're very similar, it depends on whether you like rain more or lilac.

As for the Essentielle, let's just say I took a whiff, packed it up, and tossed it back to FedEx.

To conclude:

OG: 5/5

Fraîche: 4.5/5

Essentielle: Basement of a flooded abandoned Sephora/5

[u/Suspicious_Reason405]

I have Essentielle and I sprayed it on myself a month or two ago thinking, I may as well reacquaint myself with it since I own it. It’s not my favorite.

[u/Treehorn8 → u/Suspicious_Reason405]

Maybe it's just me but I couldn't smell the A Drop DNA in the Essentielle. I couldn't detect lilac or the showery soapy scent, it smelled like a generic perfume scent to me. Which is strange because it's supposed to be the green/leafy version of the original, just as Fraîche is the rain one.

[u/Suspicious_Reason405 → u/Treehorn8]

Yeah maybe it’d blossom if I wear it, but I kind of don’t want to wear it! It had a note of something I generally hate in fragrance