Replica Matcha Meditation
Martin Margiela (2021)

I agree with the other reviewers, this starts off smelling like matcha green tea - with jasmine, but unfortunately it's very short lived. The base, or what remains after that is very similar to Black Opium.

I get a brief whiff of matcha and green tea in the opening, but then it quickly fades away. The green tea is merely a top note, so if you're looking for a matcha-dominant scent, I'm not sure if this one will fully meet your expectations. After the opening, I detect a chocolate scent that's blended with a bit of mate, giving it a slight bitterness.

In terms of performance, I'd say it's moderate with decent projection for the first 2 hours. Given the scent's brief matcha and green tea notes, 'Matcha Flash' would have been a fitting name.

I own this scent from last Black Friday and although I have thought that this might be for murky rainy autumn days... I wear it right now, on 6th July :) Because it is murky, cold, rainy day :)

This fragrance was introduced to me in a Notino perfumery, where the girl was an Ambassador of Maison Margiela and Atelier Cologne. She understood very quickly, that I am not a usual customer and my nose is trained. /Well, I guess 95% of reviewers on fragrance forums have trained nosies as well :)/
So she reached for the Matcha Tea because she knew it was unusual and someone so spoiled like me would like it.
Well, she was right, because I own it now :)

I guess it is not for everyone. The green tea, I would say green jasmine tea, is very present. And the white chocolate. I happen to like these, but not everyone likes true green tea and white chocolate. Especially when they are together. Years ago, my colleague used to drink a wide range of loose teas, she had so many beautiful sachets of various tea leaves of different colours, scents, flavours and origin... I liked my colleague's whole Zen personality with her weird bohemian clothes and jewels. She prepared these teas with such a ritual, I always got a little tiny porcelain colourful bowl with some exotic tea... That is when I got familiar with true loose teas. And the whole process of preparing and serving and drinking of tea was such an "asian", "buddhistic" experience, that I was instantly transferred to Far East in my mind. Probably that is the reason why I like to wear this fragrance on a rainy days, because I find the rain calming... and the tea as well.

I like all the notes listed, even if I can't particularly pick them up in this fragrance. I cannot say I smell moss, or cedar, or neroli. Everything is beautifully blended in here. For me, those 2/3 notes are the most prominent - tea, jasmine, chocolate. Very weird combination, and very beautiful. It has a calming effect on me, I feel cozy wearing this. I am happy that I found this fragrance, because it is so hard to find a good tea fragrance!

The opening has a bitterness to it that Doesn’t agree with me but after a few minutes, it becomes sweet and pleasant. It has more notes that I don’t recognize than their previous green tea offering (tea escape), and I don’t think this was an improvement. Some sort of floral note starts to emerge and almost completely takes over for me. Where’s the tea? And for some reason, almost every fragrance I’ve tried from this brand, after a few hours, becomes something entirely different on me. It takes on a very soapy and powdery smell, not in a good way. As for longevity, this lasts about 2.5-3 hrs before becoming a soapy skin scent. And the sillage/projection before that was low on me.

Very artsy, even for Replica. I don't like the bitterness of actual tea flavor but I do like tea-based scents that focus more on the aroma of tea. Matcha Meditation starts off citrusy but then becomes bitter like the flavor of tea and green leaves, mixed with an overabundance of jasmine. Smelled up close on skin, there's also something odd that reminds me of cardboard or gunpowder.

The drydown becomes more agreeable, the further it gets from the opening. It becomes more powdery and sweet. Much nicer.

Average performance overall. The projection is decent but never loud while the longevity is maybe 4-5 hours.