Days and nights of Mitsouko

I’ve been wearing Mitsouko (2017 EDP) for 5 days and nights in a row, something that rarely happens given my collection of about 80 bottles. I’m at my parents’ for a week, and Mitsouko is one of the two decants I’ve brought with me.
Flash back to two or three years ago when I had just started this fragrant journey and when I smelled Mitsouko for the first time. It smelled to my uninitiated nose like canned peaches and that was all. I was left unmoved.
With my nose now more experienced than before, I’m starting to appreciate Mitsouko more and more. I get that mesmerising contrast of bright citruses and resinous labdanum and dark moss, a contrast that defines the chypre genre. Once sprayed, I can notice right away the bright bergamot and other citruses (although the bergamot smells more muted from the decant than coming straight from the bottle - I think some of that sharpness is lost during my decant process). The bergamot smells almost gasoline-like. The citruses are accompanied with the famous note of peach aldehyde, giving this brightness a sweet fruity twist. There’s also a spicy note of pepper and cinnamon and a powdery floral note. At the same time, I can already tell there’s something dark lurking underneath. A scent of dampness, earth, old book, musty wooden closet. This darkness is going to get more and more noticeable over time, while at the same time the peachy spiciness hovers faintly but never disappears. From the beginning to the end, it’s a transition from a warm radiance to a damp murkiness. It’s a play of light.
It’s said that Mitsouko is a simple formula with few ingredients, but it never smells simple to me. On the contrary, every day Mitsouko reveals to me a different aspect of its complexity. One day the lipsticky aspect of iris is more evident, another day there’s a stronger floral note of rose and lilac that I could almost swear was Chamade. Sometimes I could smell the vetiver very clearly, sometimes the pepper comes out sharper. During the day it could be more powdery violet, in the night it might be more earthy and more severe. It keeps showing me a different face every time I wear it, and it never ceases to amaze me.
Personally this multi-faceted dry-down shows the mastery of the perfumer, which stands in a stark contrast with most of the contemporary fragrances. Today’s perfumes might smell wonderful for the first couple of minutes, or even the first two hours. Then everything goes abysmal. They either keep shouting with the same loud and rude voice with synthetic woody amber or caramelised patchouli, or they go puff and disappears, leaving a nondescript soft cloud of vanilla and detergent white musk. My disappointment at the hastily and poorly manufactured dry-down of “modern” perfumes just makes me appreciate more and more the true perfumery of the bygone days, and Mitsouko is one of those gems.
Wearing Mitsouko these days taught me also the virtue of modesty. I usually spray any perfume with a heavy hand - six sprays or even more. Since I’m with my parents who have no habit of wearing perfumes, I go with a lighter hand of one or two sprays from my decant, which amounts to just about one spray from the bottle. With such a small quantity, the current 2017 EDP of Mitsouko surprised me with its tenacity, even during these dog days of 35 degree Celsius. It goes quite diffusive for a couple of hours and I can often catch a whiff of it by the end of the day. When I spray it at night, I can still smell it on my skin when I wake up the next morning.
This experience with Mitsouko EDP makes me crave a bottle of the extrait. I might be able to get a hand on a bottle of vintage but I’m not sure from when. What do you think of hunting down a bottle of vintage extrait of Mitsouko? Monsieur Guerlain tells us that chypres don’t age well, and the large amount of fresh bergamot in Mitsouko cannot stand the test of time. What do you think?