Mojave Ghost Eau de Parfum Byredo

The house of Byredo was my first encounter with niche fragrances. They are quite linear, light perfumes without being easy or boring. Mojave Ghost being one of their bestsellers, I had read so many reviews I didn’t know what to expect.

I first sampled it for 2 weeks. First impressions : oh ! What is this ? *sniffs again* this is what happened for a solid 5 days lol. I just couldn’t stop smelling it again and again. It is an addictive, comfortable, warm scent that invites you smoothly. I find it hard to describe MG. Its top note is certainly Sapodilla, which I never smelled before. A very musky fruity (but not overly sweet) scent. Not disappointed at all. It smells clean, creamy (thanks to the noticeable sandalwood) and cozy. I do understand why many people get that soapy tone, but it's worth mentioning that the background ambergris and ambrette makes it skin-like, I personally like it. Like many said before, it is indeed airy and fluffly.

But the problem with Mojave Ghost isn’t its scent. Please read this, this part is no longer an opinion, it’s facts and I swear it’s worth knowing for a bottle of this price. The perfume does not perform lol. Does not project (maybe to forearm lenght on the first 30 minutes) and has no sillage whatsoever. MG is 100% a skin scent. I bought a 50ml because I was fully committed to splashing this baby a few times a day on my skin. This won’t be noticed by anyone but you. It was honestly the same experience with Gypsy Water (great fresh peppery creamy perfume btw).

Now that being said, the strangest thing happens often with MG. One day I got up got to work without perfume and in my office I could smell MG on me... I was like wtff ? Then it happened in the car on another day and so on.
MG has ambergris, whose molecules cling to one’s skin and blends with it. It is what Juliette Has a Gun’s Not a Perfume uses synthetically (cetalox).

If you know what you’re in for, then great ! MG is a skin scent, everyday wear, perfect for school, office cocooning at home, sleep time, gym, etc. If you're looking for a challenging scent, a head turner or the holy grail, consider skipping... it’s also a true ghost, comes and goes randomly !

It is hard to find a good magnolia fragrance that really does justice to those voluptuous, billowy flowers, but Mojave Ghost contains one of the purest magnolia notes I have ever smelled in perfumery, right after Elizabeth W's Magnolia (a soliflore).

The creamy musky, sandalwood mesmerized me. It's like unsalted butter. Sapote (“sapodilla”) is a fruit that I tasted in Australia. They are not "fruity" at all, and they have a very creamy & mild flavor, much in the same way that avocados are not fruity and also have a mild flavor. I had a mousse made from black sapotes, and it looked and tasted exactly like chocolate mousse, you could not tell the difference. So I think it's the sapodilla that lends the incredible, slightly unusual creaminess to the fragrance.

Mojave Ghost drifts up to my nose for a solid 12 hours. That is surprising sillage and lasting strength for a perfume that smells so soft and ethereal.

So many other sandalwoods on the market are too much like particle board, too dry, or annoyingly coconutty. This one is by far my favorite sandalwood perfume, next to Bois

Mojave Ghost is a casual, comfortable scent, like your favorite pair of jeans. It's in the category of perfumes that are typically described as nude, musky, Nivea cream, or maybe laundry detergent. Clean, sweet, just a tad powdery, with a creamy/oily base that melts into your skin. My favorite from Byredo, now that Green is discontinued.

"ohh This smells like nothing hurts " . Those were the exact words when my nephew smelled it.

This is a love for the first sniff ,very comforting , very unique, relaxing smell . I smelled about 7 from byredo and they there's some similarity with other fragrances , but this one is just form a different planet.

I can’t believe people smell anything akin to Daisy in this fragrance. (I have a strong dislike for Daisy, and all it’s iterations) But I guess part of what we should love so much about fragrance is how it tickles every brain diffferently.

I suspect that there is a variable in Mohave Ghost that some may be anosmic to. To me, it isn’t some wispy insubstantial thing; it manages beauty and power, while honouring it’s ethereal namesake.

When I put this on my skin, it becomes huge. So many people ask about it.
The general feel is cold, like clear night air. Diaphanous, but apparent. The notes blend into a beautiful entity, who walks with me for about 4 hours, and then ghosts away.

I still love her even though she’s flighty.

My signature scent. My emotional connection to this perfume is so random and so unexpected, which makes me love this perfume even more. The first time I visited a Byredo store, I recognized a “paper” or “wood” smell in the store that instantly reminded me of my high school library. The library was air-conditioned, clean, quiet, and smelled like paper—not the white A4 papers, but the brown ones of well-kept novels. This paper smell was never something I kept in my memory or even cherished. It was just how the library smelled like and it was lost somewhere in my memory. But at the Byredo store, when I first detected this paper smell, the imagery that this scent brought of my high school library was so accurate, so vivid that my memory with that particular place suddenly felt so special. It was like the involuntary memory Gustave Flaubert wrote about in one of his novels (can’t remember which one), where a bite of a Madeleine instantly transported him to a forgotten piece of his past. I asked the store manager at Byredo what this paper smell was and she was not able to understand what I was talking about. That’s obvious because if it weren’t for my memory, I wouldn’t say that this smells like paper. So I tested out several perfumes at the store, thinking that maybe the paper smell is not from a particular perfume but from a combination of numerous ones by Byredo. Then I sniffed at Mojave Ghost and there it was! Mojave Ghost is so unique. It’s a fragrance you will never find somewhere else. In my opinion, it transcends the floral/woody classification, or even the specific notes it is made out of. I usually like perfumes for their notes, but this one breaks all those labels. To me, it is truly about the memory. Not even a memory that I’m particularly fond of. It’s just a random piece of my past experience, but being able to connect to it through a scent is simply fascinating.