Welcome to Deep Reviews—your one-stop destination to discover the absolute best products and brands the beauty industry has to offer. Every month, the Who What Wear staffers you already know and trust will research, test, and review the market’s most sought-after and buzzed-about products to see which formulas (of the hundreds up for consideration) are truly worth your hard-earned money and attention. You can expect honest, completely uncensored feedback and no-BS recommendations our hard-to-please testers endorse without reservations. To put it simply, stick with us, and buyer’s remorse will be a thing of the past.
The majority of our Deep Reviews will feature our editors’ honest, ultra-hot takes on wider product categories or multiple products within a particular beauty brand, but every so often, we’ll sprinkle in a special single-product format called Honestly, I Love It. As the name suggests, these reviews will hone in on one standout beauty formula our editors quite literally can’t shut up about. This time around, I’m highlighting Maison Margiela’s Replica On a Date Eau de Toilette ($160) and Scented Candle ($70).
On any Friday night, there’s a good chance you’ll catch me curled up with a lovely cup of tea, nursing my rom-com habit. (Lately, my movies of choice star Meg Ryan and are set in New York City in the ’90s.) Maybe it’s my love for all things gut-wrenchingly romantic, but I’ve always wanted to romanticize my life as if it was one big rom-com with me as the leading lady. Have you ever noticed these movies have a signature aesthetic? From drafty bookstores to oversize sweaters to flower market meet-cutes, I’ve always wanted to capture how I feel when I watch rom-com films. Imagine my surprise when I found a romantic fragrance embodying all that and more.
That’s right! Maison Margiela’s new eau de toilette and scented candle smell exactly like your favorite cozy rom-com (or how you feel while watching it). One spritz of the fragrance on the nape of the neck or the inside of the wrist is all it takes to put me in the best of moods. Lighting the scented candle transports me to a warm and familiar place. If you haven’t been introduced to the world of Maison Margiela or rom-com films of the ’90s and early ’00s, consider this your chance to romanticize your life to the max.
Believe it or not, you don’t have to be a Meg Ryan character to experience what it feels like to fall in love. All you need is a spray of the Replica On a Date fragrance. Like all fragrances in Maison Margiela’s extensive Replica line, On a Date is tied to a specific moment in time and meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia even if you’ve never experienced said event or place before. On a Date is “set” in 2014 Provence. A vibrant and sensual medley of ripe grapes, rose petals, and sparkling bergamot helps to paint a picture of a passionate love affair between two individuals who spend their time together nestled among the overgrown fields of Provence’s vineyards.
An unexpectedly warm and inviting breeze carries with it the soft, sun-bathed muskiness of the countryside. There’s a hint of smooth black currant liquor to open the fragrance, followed by layers of sweet and mildly spicy oil notes. This entire olfactory experience is unique and wildly romantic. The fragrance is housed in a minimal bottle influenced by the look of classic apothecary jars with an easy-to-use pump and delicately wrapped in rope as an homage to the Parisian brand’s original couture line, Maison Margiela.
Maison Margiela is a luxury French haute couture fashion house founded by Belgian designers Martin Margiela and Jenny Meirens in 1988. Replica, the brand’s first fragrance collection, launched in 2012 with unique and enchanting fragrances that aim to evoke personal memories and images through scent. Its most recent fragrance, On a Date, is just one of the many eau de toilettes and candles Who What Wear beauty editors have fallen head over heels for. This particular scent, however, can be credited to the nose and talents of Carlos Benaïm.
As a child in Morocco, Benaïm expressed an early interest in the composition and extraction of essential oils. Ralph Lauren’s Polo, Calvin Klein’s Euphoria, and Viktor&Rolf’s best-selling Flowerbombcan all be traced back to him. However, the intrigue doesn’t stop there. Maison Margiela has taken the creation of its charming eau de toilettes one step further with deliciously fragrant scented candles. The On a Date candle echoes its eau de toilette partner, creating a seductive ambiance from mineral wax and a single wick that has a seven-hour burn time. Crafted in the South of France, Maison Margiela’s scented candles possess a high volume of perfume concentrate, rivaling that of its eau de toilettes.
Pair the two together, and you’ve got an olfactory experience like no other. Since receiving this fragrance, I’ve worn it every day. I love how it shifts and transforms with time, beginning with bold florals and ending with a whisper of sun-drenched fruit. The candle has also quickly become a new favorite of mine. I love beginning my morning by lighting it to make my cozy one-bedroom apartment smell warm and inviting. I may not be Meg Ryan living in the heart of a bustling city with dial-up internet, but I sure know how to bring on the romance.
Next: My Friends Always Ask Me What Foundation I’m Wearing—This Chanel Dupe Is *It*
