Olympios by Missoni (1994)

I’ve been quite on a “vintage Fahrenheit craze” lately, since I’ve been finally able to stock a decent pile of backups of it, and I wore it quite often. Besides granting me hours of sinful delight, that helped me also in assessing something I wanted to check since long time –if, and how much Olympios Missoni is actually similar to vintage Fahrenheit. I own and quite like Olympios since a couple of years, and before getting some bottles lately, I only vaguely remembered vintage Fahrenheit, so I was unsure of what to think about the relationship between the two. But I was quite sure that as other reviewers mentioned, the two fragrances were quite similar. Well in fact, now that I can compare them, they are indeed. The bone-structure is clearly the same: violet, herbs, cedar, powdery flowers, a hint of leather, moss, altogether creating a similar sort of “dark terpenic violet” atmosphere.

Still, there is enough difference to avoid any redundancy (well, sort of); Fahrenheit is decidedly more powdery, gassier and darker, and way more rich and complex, while Olympios is quite more simple, more herbal, drier and quite more bitter too, ultimately a bit cheaper as well. It feels like taking inspiration from the general genius structure of Fahrenheit, bringing it on an “easier” territory, both notes-wise and quality-wise. Nonetheless I would consider it a little true keeper, as it smells basically like a sort of bitter-herbal flanker of vintage Fahrenheit, both fresher and drier at once. I wouldn’t ever recommend this as a replacement for the immense, out-of-this-world intricated beauty of vintage Fahrenheit, but it’s surely a little fascinating gem that would make a perfect “discarded flanker” of it.

7,5/10