Just digging through what seems to be the hundreds of untouched samples.  This is the first thing I grabbed…

WHAT I SMELL: Alien opens with a cashmere woody musk and cotton candy sweetened jasmine.  It’s slightly fuzzy and kind of sticky and it feels as if it’s sitting on a layer of gauze.  Very quickly I want it to tone down its sugar as the opening is just too sweet and in your face. After around 10 minutes, the fragrance still remains sweet, but the perfume loses some of the candied aspect, but what I get most of all of this clean musk dryer sheet.  Is is bad?  No, but it’s not great either.  Does it morph much past this?  Unfortunately not, there’s just lots of jasmine and woody musk.  The only thing that seems to be alien about the fragrance is that it’s taking over my body.  A couple of spritzes and it keeps growing and growing; enough to cake the back of my throat and burn my eyes.  Help!

Notes from the Thierry Mugler website: Sambac jasmine, Cashmeran wood, amber gris

WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE TO ME:  pretty dryer sheets

THREE ADJECTIVES THAT DESCRIBE ALIEN:  sweet, cloudy, youthful

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT ALIEN: Now Smell This, Perfume-Smellin’ Things, The Candy Perfume Boy

BOTTOM LINE:  I am not the target market for Alien which harkens back to the perfumes of the 1980s where young girls would blot the local mall landscape with big hair and big perfumes.  I don’t think that mall rats still exist in today’s culture, but if you’re wearing this there will be no mistaking your coming or going.  As we used to say in the 80s, “just say NO.”

• Bone Rating: 2.5 out of possible 5 bones
• Scent: Oriental Woody
• Nose:  Dominique Ropion and Laurent Bruyere
• Classification: Feminine
• Expense: Varied.  Review based on the Eau de Parfum version.