Neandertal is and was: AI, instinct, and the scent of now vs before

I tested Neandertal is™ on my left wrist and Neandertal was™ on my right, then walked into a cold morning that made everything sharper. Within minutes, I realized this pair is less a duet and more a debate. One whispers now. The other insists on before.

The premise is juicy. The house invites us to consider whether Symrise Philyra 2.0 — an AI trained to assemble accords, pivot by data, and “learn” patterns — could have built these formulas, or if they came from human hands like Isaac Sinclair, Fanny Grau, and Nikolaj Koralevich. Fragrance people love drama, but here it actually matters. If you take the bottle away, can you smell the author.

On skin, Neandertal is™ reads like a taut line. It moves with clean angles and a very contemporary polish, lucid and forward. Think cool surfaces, a gentle metallic shimmer, air that feels rinsed. It does not meander. The structure feels intentional and quick to resolve, like a sentence that lands with a period. I catch glints rather than plushness, a present-tense clarity that sits close and precise.

Neandertal was™ goes another direction. It opens wider, breathes deeper, and lingers in the gaps. There is texture here, a grain that pulls you back toward stone, ash, skin, maybe even ink. It feels slower, more shadowed, slightly feral in the way Neandertal as a brand often toys with mineral and smoke. Not louder, just more lived in. The edges blur beautifully with time.

So, AI or human. Here is my take. Neandertal is™ behaves like a system trained to prioritize cleanliness, lift, and a streamlined arc. Neandertal was™ carries a human thumbprint, the tiny imperfections that make a perfume feel like it remembers something. But I would be lying if I said either camp owns the whole truth. The thrill is the friction. Intelligence can sort patterns. Learning can copy intuition. Creation sits in the tension.

Which would I wear. Neandertal was™ pulls me in, probably because I like fragrances that leave a trace of mystery on a scarf the next day. Neandertal is™ is the one I would choose for glassy mornings, when I want my thoughts to click into place.

In 2025, this is the right conversation for perfume. Not man versus machine, but whether a scent can smell like a mind at work. These two do. And they do it differently.