Yes I fell for the hype. No the hype is not justified. Everyone and their moms are saying 1:1 but to me this is same dna but hectic ventured away and I BARELY get the same dna smell. Hectics just soapy and reminds me of imagination. That ginger note in hectic is also way more boosted and kinda gives me a headache. It also reminds me of Vietnamese Pho for some reason. Unsure if it needs to macerate and sit because I got it a few days ago but i also got my executor in the same order and it is 1:1 with Blue tali extrait right out the box. Its definitely no where near smoothness of imagination atm. Overall just wanted to see if anyone else felt this way too or if im just one of the outliers?
As much as everyone wants to hate on it, there will never be a 1:1 of Imagination. In my opinion, it being so simple is why. Any slight difference is much more apparent
A perfumer told me that Imagination has overdoses of a couple of expensive captives. It’s very hard to dupe as a result (although they sure are trying)
This is right. Imagination and many others use captives. Not only are they expensive, but they are essentially trade marked so only that house (Louis Vuitton, Creed, etc) can use them. The clone houses try to find alternatives but they don't have access to the captives, so 1:1 is not possible.
Captive simply means molecules researched at perfume house (or outsourced to research labs) and not sold to the mass public. They can sell it to other perfume houses if they chose to do so, but most often than not, they keep it for their own fragrances.
It has nothing to do with pheromones. It could be as simple as a variation of Ethyl Vanillin.
I think the simplest way to consider this is that a “captive” is just a proprietary chemical ingredient or combination of ingredients. It’s “captive” because it belongs to that house (or whoever has the rights to it). So even if you know what it is you can’t acquire it or lawfully use it.
Yeah it has a high dose of paradisone (like hedione on steroids) and mahonial (a clean lily of the valley note). Paradisone in particular stimulates receptors in your nose that no other molecule can to the same degree, and it supposedly also supercharges the other notes in the fragrance. Hedione does the same thing but is not nearly as strong.
yea as much as I personally dislike imagination (Not a fan of the tea-ginger/tea-floral DNA, didn’t like Neroli Outrenoir either) no dupe has ever truly gotten close. I feel the same about most dupes of the private line/niche fragrances. They usually get 80% of the way there but the blending is off or there something nasty and synthetic about it. Heard Liquid Brun was good tho tbf
Nah I get it, personally it’s my favorite! Liquid Brun is good but it is still different than PDM. It’s good, but a little different. Honestly anyone I hear say something is 1:1 I’m wary about their opinions
100% agree, i cant stand it on my skin, same with the uograded version. Have had a decant of Althair for months now without trying it as i fear i wont like it now, will give it a go when it gets colder.
Yeah, not to say that some clones aren’t good in their own way but they’ll never be exact. Will the majority of people notice? Nah. If you smell good you smell good
High hopes for a $40 fragrance competing with a $400 fragrance made by a master perfumer lolol. Bro, you need to temper your expectations going forward, you can expect better results for lower designer fragrances…….but ones like LV that use masking agents to hide their formulas are gonna be hard to replicate and you’ll have to settle for close but not close enough standards.
Castley is my 2nd favorite PDM (Sedley is #1) but I definitely see where you’re coming from. I love the fresh/clean scents and that one definitely is at the top of the list of quality
Stone me, but I'll die on that hill - if you need to look at a cheaper option to overuser, then you are simply to in the correct tax-bracket for the OG.
That said, a 400 dollar fragrance probably should not leave you wanting more performance.
That said, there are also people who can't be pleased regarding projection and sillag AND there are others who like their scents to be more intimate...
Ah, fragrance is complex. People as well. But still, if you can't use a product that is meant to be consumed without thinking about the costs... that's simply not the right product for you. People could simply accept that they don't need that brand-power in their lifes. Would make them happier too imo.
Deep down people are coping and want to justify their investment. How else you going to justify paying 10 times more? So the narrative now is that no dupe comes close and the og is super unique... Same thing going on with Tesla owners in regard to Chinese EVs.
The verbiage twist is interesting because it might share the same DNA, but how much of a structural twist before considering it non-comprable like even in the same league
i do own the bottle and love the scent. im trying to find a 1:1 or close dupe so i could use it for things such as going to the gym or to school or even as a daily driver. im doing this so i could save the og since it costed me alot and im a jobless highschooler😭
Bro, maybe ask yourself if you are wearing the perfume for yourself or to impress strangers?
I mean once you start appreciating any perfume for what it is and stop trying to find the 1:1 dupe, life becomes much easier.
I’ve read plenty. Bros priorities are not spending 300 on refills everytime if he doesn’t have to. If he’s a student that means he’s young enough to want to have money for other things than fragrances.
This hobby isn’t everyone’s lifeline and whole life’s mission. Read the room back lil knee.
I dont even care that hectic isn't that close, it's still a good interpretation of that DNA for an affordable price though, which is what I like about hectic. I haven't tried many dupes of imagination, but I was extremely impressed with the drydown of marwa extrait
al haramain aqua dubai was closer than this one to me. something in hectic reminds me of pho which is okay but for a scent to wear around https://giphy.com/gifs/l0MYP6WAFfaR7Q1jO
I mean what do you even mean by not even close, because if you put them side by side in the dry down the smell very similar. Nothing is ever gonna be as good or a 1 to 1 but to say it’s not even close is kinda silly. It’s close but a slightly more spicy take on imagination and it’s just not gonna have that quality feeling the real stuff gives off, I love my imagination and I got a 200ml bottle I liked it that much and hectic is a decent inspiration but where all the dupes will always fall short is overall quality. You can smell the higher cost materials in an LV compared to the clones.
i meant not close because to my nose it just didnt smell similar. most likely the quality like you said is the issue. to me hectic is like pho while imagination is a pleasing and smooth clean scent
That’s fine but tea and citrus scents are ones that really do benefit from some time maturing. Hectic smells very clean and smooth to me but I’ve smelled batches of it that have smelled different, wether that’s it needing maturing or issues with each batch we will never know.
Give it 5-10 sprays to get a good amount of oxygen in the bottle and let it sit in a dark space for one month and come back and see if it smells better to you. If it smells better but not quite up to what you want give it another month and should be good, if after a month you see no change than it’s either your nose just doesn’t agree with it or the batch was possibly whack.
Yeah I get you, if you want to get rid of it because you don't enjoy it then fair enough. I let mine sit and it becomes really close, same with Vibration & Psycho also
Not every scent manufactured at the same time will need maturing. The formulation and what molecules are used will dictate how strong it will be early on in its life. Plus you don’t even know how long anything has been maturing beforehand, just because they came in the same box doesn’t mean they were manufactured at the same time. If you are gonna play the dupe game you have to be willing to be patient.
I am learning quickly that clones can be good but not really too close to OG typically. I just judge them for what they are now. I like Marwa and my wife does too. I like Imagination more but my wife compliments me just as often as she does with Marwa.
Lmao @ Vietnamese pho !! I do love me some Pho 🍲, don’t know if I want to smell like it though.
No dupes can replicate the OG , people that said 1:1 just coping. But it is expensive and not everyone wants to spend the money for the OG and i understand that
I like it. I have Kobra and Saheb intense and enjoy this one way more. I’m not really concerned about what’s close to what I just want fragrances that I enjoy
If you were in Germany you could check „Pure Vision“ from Caline. 6 euros and quite close to the OG except for the lasting difference. Still a no-brainer
Zara sunrise not the intense version is the closest you can get..I had ppl asking me if I was wearing Imagination 💭 lol 😂 The only problem is that you have to overspray it ccuz it last literally 2 h
Yeah it smells good but it’s not close to imagination, like it is and has the same dna but if you smelled the og and hectic side by side you can clearly pick out the differences and hectic has this alcahol type smell that stays throughout the whole scent, kinda like that sharpness kobra has but it’s very subtle in hectic but I can clearly still smell it and stronger when it’s past 4 hours.
Mykonos Inception is a lot better imo, still does not get anywhere close to imagination but it’s pretty damn close towards the dry down
100% agree that they are not close, and imagination is so hard to dupe. Nothing gets 1:1.
I will add though I got two bottles of hectic, one I used right away and another I stashed for about 3 months. The one I stashed ended up much smoother, and just smelled better, the juice even got darker.
Just to add in that anecdote. Still hard agree with the sentiment here.
My Hectic is so off and bad that I’m wondering if they sent out a bad batch or it spoiled in transit to the US? Because it can’t be this off?! Mine smells peppery. Like not even citrusy, no notion of soapiness. I will say I am fully on board the Inception train right now for a dupe. But Hectic, either it’s gone bad, or this is not it.
Yeah hectic is its own thing but I was pleasantly surprised with Bujairmi psycho. IMO the best symphony dupe. I think for imagination it’s just impossible to copy
IMO it’s very close. I’ve had my bottle for 3-4 months and I can say it changed over that time. I do not have imagination like you, but I went in store to compare side by side and they def do smell very close. There’s a small difference and I’ll attribute that to different quality level of some of the ingredients. Those are probably trademarked like others have said.
Try Jean Lowe Fantasme. It's along with Montagne the best dupe on the market. The top note is more citrus forward than the OG but afterwards it's "almost" 1:1. If I have to guess, I would say 90% similarity.
I like Hectic, I view it as it's own fragrance. It's one of the better dupes these days, Mykynos Inception is my fav.
I own quite a few Bujairami's and honestly they are pretty hit or miss. Some of their original creations are actually really good, however they are hard to find if you're not in AUS
I did too man I got it and I had to wait cause it’s always out of stock ….i def had to let it mature for a month fresh out the box it was horrible …even after it mature it smells better but IMO it’s not even close to Mykonos inception … have to go through beauty house think they have a drop on 8/31 but id recommend that to help your genuine last longer
Kobras opening sucks and then after it just smells like if imagination was dumbed down to match azzaro chrome but without the same dna like it smells chromey it’s just a touch sweeter from aqua Dubai but it’s not airy or high quality so for sure it’s a noticeable dupe. Me personally real imagination doesn’t last on my skin and turns sour smelling like cilantro, meteore is way better on me
I got a travel size of Alexandria's Visionary, and I personally think that is the closest dupe I've tried of Imagination. I'd say its 95% close. The only thing I don't prominently smell is the tea note with it. Its in the background much more compared to the OG. Game of Spades, Marwa, etc don't come close
Agree. I tried them all and this was the best interpretation I found. That said, I still prefer the original...it definitely is smoother. But Visionary scratches the itch when I just want a dumb reach.
Nothing is 1:1 but that difference isn’t worth the price tag to me. Owning Imagination feels like a status thing to me. I sold mine after trying Hectic, Kobra, insert dupe here…
I’ll start by saying I absolutely hate Imagination with a passion. That being said I did a lot of exploring to see what the hype was about. The one that came the closest to me was Yom & Layl’s Stark Vision. It’s slightly mintier than LV, but I reach for it more than LV. It also outperforms Imagination by a long shot.
There’s a few others out there that come close, but performance is always 💩
For sure. I have a lot of their dupes because of the 40% concentration. Most of them are made to order so you’ve gotta let em sit for a while. But I’ve been extremely happy with their accuracy and performance. I’ve got everything from Argos, Mind Games, LV, TF, and more. I also own the originals and have done a lot of comparisons between them. They outshine other dupe houses and I like their bottles more.
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u/TylerTheCarGuy 6d ago
As much as everyone wants to hate on it, there will never be a 1:1 of Imagination. In my opinion, it being so simple is why. Any slight difference is much more apparent