Tomoo Inaba is the author of both Moth and Nightingale, and I found the latter beautiful, if strained and derivative. It draws heavily from antique chypres, chiefly Mitsouko, with a whisper of modern flair. It smells lovely, and I’d wear it -- except, well, Mitsouko. Inaba clearly lifted from it, and did so skillfully, but in the end, Guerlain does it better, and for far less. There’s no sense in paying a premium and waiting for an import from Canada (or California, if you’re a Luckyscent customer) when you can find a superior rendition on eBay or Amazon and have Mitsy at your door the next day for $200 less.
Moth, however, is another story. I wouldn’t wear it even if you paid me -- and if you offered a million-dollar check, I’d hesitate. It opens promisingly: nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, pepper, saffron, cumin, with each note distinct and vivid for five fleeting minutes, and a lemon aldehyde lifting the whole into clarity. I almost believe I could enjoy it. Then the curtain drops. Florals: mimosa, rose, iris, heliotrope, and jasmine well up sweetly, but are yoked to a synthetic oud accord that crushes every bit of their natural dreaminess. It smells like damp wood, dried mouse droppings, and mothballs. It doesn’t evoke a forgotten drawer; it shoves you into a rotting attic, like something from a gothic horror movie set. Oh, and it fleetingly reminds me of how my great grandmother's house used to smell, back when we'd visit her in the very late 1980s and very early 1990s, shortly before her death. Her house reeked. Truly a dismal memory.
For the first hour, I hoped to love Moth. It lingered in that peculiar space of possibly being another Cockatiel, i.e., a Zoologist I'd consider buying. But at ninety minutes, Moth crossed the point of no return. The oud, the faux ambergris (not Ambroxan, as it smells like Inaba needlessly attempted to go the long way around and do his own painstaking reconstruction), the honey, the unwashed patchouli -- all of it grotesque, like a brutalist portrait of decay. It conjures the stench of wood saturated by decades of human hands, like old church pews blooming on a humid summer's day with their own unholy spirit. That’s Moth, for no less than twelve suffocating hours. Ugh.