Replica Bubble Bath (Maison Margiela)

Photo by Lokeswaran Kaliyappan

Everyone's mileage seems to vary with this one. Some get hotel soap. Others get a "warm" or "lavender" impression. I get the warmth and the soapiness, and also coconut. Lots of coconut. Some sort of coconut aldehyde? Who knows. It opens with a misting of soapy abstract synthetics, like getting an eyeful of shampoo in the shower. Within ten minutes, the musky white-noise aspect, fresh but forgettable, fills the headspace around me, and I'm bored silly ten minutes after that.

I guess you could say this smells good in a conventional sense, but I'm note even sure I'd go that far. Soap smells better. Actual soap, that is. I use a body wash by Native called Lilac & White Tea, and if they made it into an EDT, I'd buy a bottle and use it regularly. It's that good. It's way better than Margiela's Bubble Bath, and that's not good, considering the price these frags are going for. If you're applying perfume because you're looking for a cheap thrill and don't really care exactly how you smell, I guess you could use something like Bubble Bath and get the thrill, but not cheaply. So what's the point?

Again, I've said it before, and here it is: Just because you're a niche brand doesn't mean I'm interested in you. Your perfumes need to change the game, or I'm probably going to write up a bad review. You need to be shaping the landscape; you need to be inspiring a whole new generation of perfumers; you ought to be aiming for the stars. Olivier Creed spent most of his career getting shit on by industry insiders for needlessly spending a fortune on crème de la crème materials, but you know something? He was right.