Mind Games Blockade: The Complete Guide to the Fragrance (and the Best Extrait Dupe)

Chess has given perfumery a surprisingly good vocabulary. A gambit, a stalemate, a blockade — each one a small drama of pressure and position, which is exactly the territory the niche house Mind Games likes to work in. Of all the fragrances in its chess-themed line-up, Blockade has become the one people actually hunt down, a fruity-leather extrait that opens like a trap and settles into something far warmer and more defensive than its first five minutes suggest. Here's what's actually in the bottle, why it costs what it does, and which Alexandria UK Extrait de Parfum gets you the closest to the real thing without the designer price tag.

What is Mind Games Blockade?

Mind Games is an independent American niche brand built entirely around a chess conceit: each release is named for a move or a position on the board, and Blockade — launched in 2022 and composed by perfumer Christelle Laprade — takes its name from the move of parking a piece directly in front of an opponent's pawn to stop it dead. It's a fitting name for a scent that spends its opening minutes being almost aggressively bright before planting itself in something much heavier and harder to shift.

As an Extrait de Parfum, Blockade sits at the highest, most concentrated, longest-lasting form of fragrance a house can release — which is part of why a 100ml bottle of the original retails well into the hundreds of pounds. It's also unisex by design, built around a mango-and-leather contrast rather than anything coded strictly masculine or feminine, which is one reason it's picked up a following well beyond the usual niche-collector crowd.

The scent, note by note

Blockade opens on a genuinely unusual top accord: ripe mango skin, pink pepper, and tomato leaf, sharpened with a flash of bergamot. It's a strange, almost savoury-fruity combination on paper, but on skin it reads as juicy and faintly green — more like biting into underripe mango than a typical "tropical fruit" perfume cliché. Lavender, a soft watery cyclamen, mango flower, and star anise carry the heart, keeping that initial brightness aromatic and slightly spiced rather than letting it turn sugary.

The real character of the fragrance shows up in the base, where patchouli, amber, oud, and a soft suede take over and hold the fragrance down for the rest of the day. That's the "blockade" the name is getting at: a scent that starts light on its feet and ends up planted, leathery, and resinous, with the fruit lingering only as a faint echo underneath the wood and skin-like suede. It's this fruity-leather-oud combination — rare enough that there isn't an obvious designer equivalent — that's made Blockade one of the more talked-about releases from a brand that otherwise stays fairly under the radar outside niche fragrance circles.

Why the original is hard to justify for everyday wear

Mind Games positions itself as a small-batch, artisan house, and the original Blockade is priced accordingly — a 100ml bottle typically retails for several hundred pounds once shipping and import costs from the US are factored in for UK buyers. That's a lot to commit to for a fragrance this unusual, especially if you're not certain the mango-tomato-leaf opening is going to work on your skin the way it does in reviews. It's exactly the kind of niche extrait that benefits from being tried in a smaller format first, and it's exactly the gap Alexandria UK's Barricade was built to fill.

Barricade: Alexandria UK's Extrait de Parfum take on Blockade

Barricade is Alexandria's own Extrait de Parfum interpretation of Blockade's fruity-leather-oud structure, built to the same logic as the rest of the Alexandria range: real Extrait de Parfum concentration, no shortcuts, and a price that lets you actually wear a scent like this rather than save it for special occasions. The Barricade product page lays out the pyramid as mango, spicy pepper, and tomato leaf up top, a heart of protective spices, smooth leather, and herbal facets, and a base of oud, amber, and warm woods — the same bright-to-leathery arc that defines the original, built at Extrait de Parfum strength rather than a lighter eau de parfum dilution.

Because it's formulated as a true Extrait rather than a weaker eau de parfum or eau de toilette, Barricade is designed to project confidently for the first few hours and then settle into a close, long-lasting skin scent — the kind of performance that's genuinely difficult to get from mass-market alternatives, and one of the main reasons people search out Extrait-strength dupes for niche releases like this rather than settling for a diluted copy. At under £95 for a full 100ml bottle, £59.99 for 60ml, or £39.99 for the 30ml size, it's a fraction of what the original Mind Games release costs — and the 10ml travel spray at £19.99 is a sensible way to confirm the mango-leather-oud combination works for you before committing to a bigger bottle.

This is also where Alexandria's broader positioning matters: the brand's fragrances are hand-poured in England and sold as honest, clearly-labelled interpretations rather than passed off as the real thing, which is worth knowing if you've seen cheaper "dupe" claims elsewhere that don't hold up on skin. Shops like Perfume Parlour and Noted Aromas cover some of the same designer-inspired territory, but niche, chess-themed indie releases like Blockade are a narrower lane that fewer dupe houses bother chasing — which is partly why Barricade stands out as one of the more distinctive entries in Alexandria's catalogue rather than another obvious household-name clone.

If you're building out a wider collection of extrait alternatives, it's worth browsing Alexandria's full UK perfume dupe list for more designer-inspired options, or heading to the Winter Fragrance Collection for other warm, woody-leather scents that suit the colder months the way Barricade's base notes do. The full range is also browsable on the main Perfume Dupes UK collection.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Mind Games Blockade smell like?
It opens bright and slightly savoury with mango, pink pepper, and tomato leaf, moves through a spiced floral heart of lavender, star anise, and cyclamen, and dries down into a warm, leathery base of patchouli, amber, oud, and suede. The overall effect is fruity and fresh at first, then increasingly woody and grounded as it wears.

Is Blockade a men's or women's fragrance?
It's unisex. The mango-and-spice opening and leather-oud base don't lean distinctly masculine or feminine, which is part of why it's found a following outside the usual men's-niche or women's-niche fragrance crowds.

Is Barricade a close match for the original?
Barricade follows the same top-to-base structure — mango and spice up top, leather and herbal facets in the heart, oud, amber and warm woods underneath — built at Extrait de Parfum concentration so it has the longevity and skin-close depth that niche extraits are known for, at a fraction of the original's price.

How long does Barricade last on skin?
As a true Extrait de Parfum, Barricade is formulated for strong initial projection that settles into a long-lasting skin scent, which is the performance profile most people are specifically chasing when they look for an Extrait-strength alternative to a niche release like Blockade.

Should I buy a sample before committing to a full bottle?
Yes — the mango-tomato-leaf opening is distinctive enough that it's worth testing on your own skin first. Barricade's 10ml travel spray is an affordable way to do that before deciding on the 30ml, 60ml, or 100ml sizes.