We Review Maison Margiela’s REPLICA Jazz Club

The Brooklyn jazz club you didn’t know you wanted to smell like.

Published Categorized as Perfume Reviews

We review Jazz Club, a true-to-life recreation of the boozy, smoky, dimly-lit atmosphere of a New York City jazz club from Maison Margiela’s REPLICA collection.

Maison Margiela

Maison Margiela is a French fashion house founded in 1988 by Belgian designer Martin Margiela.

It didn’t take Margiela long to make a name for himself as one of the most private and enigmatic players on the 1980s Paris fashion scene. He refused to take bowls at his live shows, shunning the spotlight and demanding that all interviews be taken by the design team together.

The house of Margiela, designer of haute-couture and ready-to-wear garments, bags, shoes, jewelry, and fragrances, celebrates the aesthetics of the unorthodox and embraces a philosophy that fashion is an artistic expression rather than a personality cult.

Maison Margiela fragrances are like everything else: unobtrusively authentic and deceptively simple recreations of past memories, a representation of how someone saw things at a particular time. You wear them not because they came from a particular designer or were concocted by a named nose—but because you want to wear it.

Today, Maison Margiela is part of fashion conglomerate OTB Group, the parent company of brands Amiri, Brave Kid, Diesel, Marni, Jil Sander, and Viktor & Rolf.

REPLICA Jazz Club

Facts

HouseMaison Margiela
FragranceREPLICA Jazz Club
ConcentrationEau de Toilette (EDT)
NoseAlienor Massenet
Released2013
FamilyWarm and spicy
DescriptionA true-to-life recreation of the boozy, smoky, dimly-lit atmosphere of a New York City jazz club.
Sizes0.33 fl oz (10 ml), 1.01 fl oz (30 ml), 3.38 fl oz (100 ml)

Ingredients

Denatured Alcohol, Water, Fragrance, Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate, Coumarin, Limonene, Ethylhexyl Salicylate, Butyl Methoxydibenzoylmethane, Linalool, Citral, Geraniol, Ci 15985, Cinnamal, Hydroxycitronellal, Eugenol, Citronellol, Ci 19140, Ci 17200, Ci 42090, C162585/2

Source: Maison Margiela, last retrieved December 28, 2021

Our Review

Much can be said about Maison Margiela’s fragrances.

Like the Parisian maison’s high-end fashion designs, each fragrance is a recreation of the way in which someone experienced a particular place at a particular moment in time, which you, in turn, choose to wear so that you can create experiences of your own.

In essence, a replica of something that took place decades ago, from the recollection of someone you’ve never known, at a place you’ve never visited. Yet one that’s so real, you feel as if you’ve been there, with them, time and time before. Until you personalize it—and it becomes your own.

And so, REPLICA Jazz Club takes you to the cigar-infused, rum-laden atmosphere of a cozy, dark-lit jazz club somewhere in Brooklyn, New York City, sometime in the year 2013.

The top notes are primofiore lemon, pink pepper, and neroli oil. The heart notes are clary sage oil, rum absolute, and Java vetiver oil. The base notes are styrax resin, tobacco leaf absolute, and vanilla beans.

A replica so perfect, you can see, hear, smell, and taste the original. Two words come to mind: booze and tobacco.

The towering maroon curtain guarding the entrance. The squeaking wooden floors, the twists and turns of the winding spiral staircase. The melody of piano being played by ear in the background as the pianist picks up notes, make them his own, and passes them on to his fellow players on the bass and saxophone.

Picking a table in a corner of the bar with ambience and good acoustics, you sit down and feel the comfort of the worn, black-leather chairs. The taste of old, sweetly Barbados rum from a forgotten dusty cask. The smell of smuggled, fresh-out-the-humidor Cohiba, Cuaba, and Trinidad Cuban cigars.

Spray REPLICA Jazz Club on your skin, and it greets you with boozy warmth and pungent spiciness.

Sweet and piquant pink pepper dominates the opening, but in an artful and subtle way—not to the extent where it almost makes you sneeze.

The citrus notes are barely perceptible and rather heavy; as if they come not from halved fruit and freshly squeezed juice, but from essential oils and dried rind. (In reality, they do.)

Soon after, you get hit by the booziness of rum, the smokiness of vetiver, and the fresh-tobacco scent of clary sage. These are deep, weighty notes that hit you so intensely, some of you may even find it overwhelming.

With time, the scent dries down with the olfactory sensations of smoldering cigars, damp wooden floors, and sweet but profoundly earthy Bourbon vanilla beans. Here again, the words it brings up in my mind as I describe it are heavy, boozy, and full-bodied.

It cannot be left unsaid that, during the dry down, REPLICA Jazz Club becomes noticeably cozier.

For me, it brought back memories of sitting by the big fireplace at my great-grandparents’ country house. But this time, I was in their house but decades later—a grown man with a glass of rum in my hand, indulging in sweet memories of times long past.

Overall, I have spent much of my young-adult years in high-end clubs, and I can tell you that the precision with which Maison Margiela have recreated their atmosphere is mesmerizing.

You will appreciate this fragrance if you are looking for a rummy, tobacco-ish scent that’s potent and seductive, but at the same time cozy and comforting. It is best worn at nighttime in fall and winter.

Maison Margiela markets REPLICA Jazz Club as a fragrance for men. However, quite a few women who favor boozy tobacco fragrances choose to wear—and layer—it regardless. (See our favorite layering combinations below.)

Longevity

For an Eau de Toilette (EDT), REPLICA Jazz Club has good longevity. Sprayed on the pulse points of freshly-bathed skin in the morning, the scent stays with you for 5-6 hours.

You asked, we answered: Why some perfumes last longer than others

Sillage

This fragrance has a good projection for 2-3 hours and then remains perceptible throughout the duration of the fragrance, but becomes more intimate and sits closely to the skin.

Layering

For wearers of all genders: REPLICA Jazz Club pairs well with Tobacco Vanille by Tom Ford. Maison Margiela’s Jazz Club enhances the tobacco notes of Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille; it also makes it boozier and sweeter.

Another unisex layering for REPLICA Jazz Club is with Angels’ Share The Liquors by Kilian. The two scents enhance each other to create an amber, rummy, and smoky scent like no other.

For female wearers, REPLICA Jazz Club combines well with Sunshine Woman by Amouage, becoming brighter and more amiable.

Sizes

Maison Margiela’s REPLICA Jazz Club comes in three sizes: a 0.33 fl oz (10 ml) travel spray as well as a 1.01 fl oz (30 ml) and 3.38 fl oz (100 ml) standard-sized bottle.

The travel spray and the standard-sized bottles are not refillable. The spray is equipped with a cap, whereas the standard-sized bottles are only equipped with a protector. This is also why the latter are inconvenient to carry around and travel with.

The standard-sized bottle is as much a decorative item as it is a carrier of fragrance: An old-fashioned, apothecary-style glass jar with a chic atomizer and cotton label with typewriter-like print.

If you buy this fragrance from Maison Margiela’s online store, you can personalize the text on the cotton label with your own wording for Provenance and Period as well as Style Description.

Read our guide: Which size perfume to buy?

Price Tag

Similar to the rest of the fragrances in Maison Margiela’s REPLICA collection, Jazz Club sells at a relatively reasonable price for the caliber of fragrance and the originality of the bottle that you get.

On the day of publishing this review, the 0.33 fl oz (10 ml) travel spray sold for $30, the 1.01 fl oz (30 ml) bottle for $72, and the 3.38 fl oz (100 ml) bottle for $135 on Maison Margiela’s online store.

Frequently Asked

If you like REPLICA Jazz Club, what other fragrances will you like?

Consider Fan Your Flames by Nishane (for women) and Hot Couture by Givenchy (for women).

In Conclusion

If smelling like booze and tobacco is your thing, then Maison Margiela’s REPLICA Jazz Club can easily become one of your favorite fragrances for nighttime wear in fall and winter. While it lacks the sophistication to be a signature scent, it’s definitely a great way to spice things up every now and then.

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