PHAEDON
BLACK VETIVER

2013

Lemon blossom
Tar
Vetiver
Pepper

Black Vetiver is my first dive into the house of Phaedon. Based on the name and bottle design, I had completely different expectations of Black Vetiver. I never read into it, so I expected a greener, darker, heavier vetiver fragrance. That’s not the case.

Essentially, Black Vetiver is 95% Tom Ford’s Grey Vetiver EDP. The 5% that’s different comes down to Black Vetiver not getting as sweet as Grey Vetiver tends to get in the drydown. And perhaps the opening is a tiny bit brighter and more like a traditional men’s barbershop cologne for a couple of minutes.

Which means it’s good, probably more to my liking than whatever expectation I had of it. Unfortunately, it’s also redundant if you own similar soapy vetiver fragrances as it doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself. As someone who owns Grey Vetiver, which probably outperforms Black Vetiver, although performance isn’t bad at all, I have no room in my collection for this otherwise well-crafted fragrance. If that space isn’t filled in your rotation yet, you might want to get your nose on this one, as it’s a worthy alternative based on what I’m smelling. For an alternative that’s even stronger, you can try Lunar Vetiver by Amouroud.