Oolong Tea

To Buy or Not to Buy?

Wearing this is like opting for an impressionist print when you desire the original masterpiece. You get the general idea – a bright, tea-infused experience – but the details are flattened and simplified. It's wearable and inoffensive, certainly, but lacks the transportive quality and sophisticated elegance of the fragrance that inspired it. You gain a work-appropriate fragrance, but you lose the comforting depth and distinctive character that made the original memorable.

Olfactory Experience

Dua's Oolong Tea attempts to capture the serene essence of Nishane's Wūlóng Chá but falls slightly short in the finesse. The initial spray offers a vibrant bergamot and candied orange peel note, quickly overtaken by a synthetic litchi accord that borders on hairspray. The tea note in the heart is present, but it’s more of a powdered iced tea mix than a steeping pot of leaves. The nutmeg adds a spicy warmth, yet the musk in the base presents a somewhat generic clean laundry effect. It diverges from the original most noticeably in the fig; here, it is subtle, almost undetectable, while the original offers a creamier, greener presence.

Wear time & Sillage

I get around 5-6 hours on my skin with this one. Projection is moderate for the first hour, reaching about an arm's length, before settling closer to the skin. I wore it during a day of errands and then while working from home; it’s pleasant enough, but I found myself wanting a richer, more nuanced experience.