Question:
I've asked the ladies this question, I would like to hear what the guys have to say about this strange, but provocative scent. My son & I both tested it about 6 months ago in Saks, I thought it smelled musty & maybe too unusual for me to wear, but he kind of liked it. What does it smell like to you & on you?....

Answer:
I think it's great! It's definitely unique and therefor hard to wear when going shopping in the supermarket for instance. I actually once just did that: Went shopping in the supermarket with a shopping cart and Messe de Minuit. I didn't care about anything than my shopping list then. Well, I felt like a weirdo afterwards to tell you the truth. For me it's a personal fragrance, mostly enjoyed after work or for bedtime. Makes me think of essentual things - no need for TV bugging advertisments in the distance - just silence - candles - and finally - a nap.

Answer:
For me Messe de Minuit is my "must be brainy now" scent.
Well, I'm always brainy I suppose (theoretical computer scientist / mathematician / academic) but sometimes when my focus isn't quite on and I feel the need to transition to a certain type of thinking I wear it.
I like MdM but it isn't 'me' the way some other fragrances are - it is more a state of mind, or a mental place. I could enjoy smelling it on a man or a woman.

Answer:
Messe de Minuit is a strange one. I have a very strong visceral reaction to it. I find it disgusting and very odd, but, all together, utterly compelling and familiar. In many ways, it’s like a Gothic monument, beautiful in its pointed ugliness, and it’s like those gargoyles one finds adorning such monuments, hideous, imposing creatures from another world, dangerous, lurking, and all the while one is strangely drawn to their otherness, to the shadow, to the other self. Good and evil, light and dark, body and soul, sin and redemption, these are the dualities *Messe de Minuit* understands and embodies. It’s a Catholic universe in a bottle, and I swear it smells exactly like the old, musty, dank little Catholic churches one finds everywhere in Europe. Churches whose scent is the accretion of incense, age, and the blood, sweat, and tears of their parishioners as they struggled with their passions and their yearning for metaphysical certainty. It’s hard to maintain faith in this one; I am still trying.
Can you tell I am conflicted?
scentemental


Answer:
I am a great sucker for incense but I find it quite "raw". For that reason, I prefer Encens et Lavande and Avignon over MdM.

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I was disappointed when I first smelled this. I was expecting something really funky and outrageous. Instead I found it very wearable and clean smelling. To me it opens up with a fizzy accord that reminds me of 7-up. It later progresses into something that smells like freshly steamed towels at a sauna. I'm missing the whole "graveyard" effect with it and I regret not being able to make that connection since I like outlandish scents.

Answer:
[quote=teflondog;999286]I was disappointed when I first smelled this. I was expecting something really funky and outrageous. Instead I found it very wearable and clean smelling. To me it opens up with a fizzy accord that reminds me of 7-up. It later progresses into something that smells like freshly steamed towels at a sauna. I'm missing the whole "graveyard" effect with it and I regret not being able to make that connection since I like outlandish scents.[/QUOTE Messe de Minuit is one of those fragrances that i have noticed, through my experience of it alters in different climates and for that musty old damp book shop church effect you have to wear it in northern europe or maybe more temperate parts of the usa.
I've worn it in damp and grey Wales where it really did give off that damp musty old church smell and also on the Greek island of Rhodes where it was almost a spicy mandarin dry type of incense smell ,one fragrance two totally different climates and two totally different outcomes .

Answer:
Absolutely love it. I don't really believe that scent is a sense connected to memory any more than hearing, touch, taste or sight are - that said, there are a few perfumes which I find very evocative (in the same way that I find some sounds or tastes evocative).
Although I'm not religious, I love church music and the beauty of church architecture. I grew up in a high-church Anglican environment, went to school next door to Westminster Abbey and later on had a choral scholarship at St Martin in the Fields. For me, these places were very happy places and it was a very happy time - Messe de Minuit nails that time down for me. The papery dankness reminds me of the rooms in the crypt at St Martin's where we kept the sheet music, the cold stone feeling reminds me of the monuments in the abbey, and it's all tied together with the incense.
I've a friend who had a very unhappy Jesuit childhood, and he hates, hates, hates MdM. Another friend is a book-loving librarian who works in a university library, and she loves it - it makes her think of book stacks. I do wonder whether this is one of those rare perfumes that people perceive completely differently depending on associations with time and place, rather that depending on the abstract beauty of the fragrance.

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I hate this stuff! If I said It's Hideous, I'd be complimenting it...
Completely unwearable, reminds me of old stuff stocked in a church or dungeon, full of incense smoke and dust. Those kind of things where rats and other disgusting insects have passed and left their smell...

Answer:
Scentementals description now makes me want to try this !