Mystikum

The Roaring 2020s

ideogram.ai

A huge black box containing two full-size bottles and two sample sets arrived unbidden from Mystikum, a German outfit. The website claims that the brand is the reincarnation of a famous fragrance house of the 1920s. It is heavy on the word salad: “Enveloped in the bewitching elixirs of Mystikum, allure becomes your ally in the subtle art of enchantment.” It makes you think that AI cannot come too soon to the rescue of fragrance PR.

A close look at the pics on the website, followed by a five-minute search on the Internet, reveals that the original Mystikum was a fragrance, the first released by Parfumerie Scherk in 1910. Scherk is now an “incubator for awesome beauty brands,” and this is their latest venture.

The project is a curious mixture of quality and lack thereof. It needs more attention to detail. The heavy and luxurious bottles are not labeled with the names of the perfumes they contain. Their grand cardboard packaging is poorly executed and fragile. It’s a good thing Mystikum sent two sample sets, because I threw out their little cardboard boxes, impossible to open without damaging, only to find that the glass sample sprays were unlabeled!

I wrote to the firm to let them know their packaging was dodgy, and they replied immediately, saying they were aware of the problem and would fix it by the time the product was shipping. Don’t let the naff names put you off. The perfumes are good stuff.

For paid subscribers: reviews of Saddles of the Silk Road, Moonlight Ceremony, The Need to Fly, The Empress’ (sic) Kiss, Tears on Mystic Sands and The Geisha’s Secret Garden.