BYRON PARFUMS
Black Dragon

2020

Honey
Mango
Pineapple

Bourbon Vanilla
Tobacco
Sandalwood

Amber
Musk
Patchouli

Up to this point, I’d only tried two of the fragrances that were responsible for Byron’s initial hype, Mula Mula & Chronic. Sadly, I didn’t like either of them at all. And I’ve been meaning to get back into the brand and give it another chance. Which came down to Black Dragon and I much prefer this (although I still don’t really get any high quality feeling from it).

Black Dragon feels like a bit of weird mix of notes, but it works surprisingly well. On one hand, you have a very sweet tobacco side to this fragrance. It’s definitely tobacco-ish, but as vanillic as you can imagine. I find it almost lactonic, with nods towards coconut and suntan lotion. Honeyed as well, although I personally find it more vanilla than actual honey in the opening. The honey takes over after a while.

And then you have this fresh, but also very sweet, fruity side. Which frankly, smells super plasticy, unnatural to me. But it works for this combination. No leather accord or saffron are listed, but it registers as such to my nose.

But overall, on the light side for anything close to tobacco or leather and extremely sweet. Caramelized mango, vanilla sugar… like a sweet tropical cocktail with a very generic vanilla-tobacco and plasticy leather hint in the background. I would likely prefer this more at half the sweetness, but I enjoyed wearing it nonetheless.