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      Shaghaf Vanilla Toffee (2024) • SWISS ARABIAN🔺, ScentAdvice

      SWISS ARABIAN
      Shaghaf Vanilla Toffee

      2024

      Shaghaf Vanilla Toffee (2024) • SWISS ARABIAN🔺, ScentAdvice


      buttery toffee
      arabica coffee
      walnut pastry
      date milk
      vanilla
      cardamom
      vanilla caviar
      brown sugar
      benzoin
      tonka bean
      woody notes
      musk

      ‘Shaghaf Vanilla Toffee unfolds with the decadent sweetness of buttery toffee and rich Arabica coffee. The heart reveals a delectable walnut pastry, reminiscent of the intricate layers of a Swiss nusstorte. Creamy date milk envelops like a velvety indulgence, offering a sensation akin to the richness of the desert’s golden sunsets, while vanilla and cardamom add a sprinkle of exotic spice, whisking you away to distant, enchanted lands. Finally, the mysterious allure of warm and woody notes completes the journey with a seductive, sweet embrace.’ – Swiss Arabian

      Shaghaf Vanilla Toffee (2024) • SWISS ARABIAN🔺, ScentAdvice
      Shaghaf Vanilla Toffee is my first time trying a Swiss Arabian, and I’m afraid I must report, that this is borderline unwearable to me.

      What a messy composition this is; it has the expected ‘vanilla toffee’, which is very sweet and… well, okay at best. Too sweet, too ‘in your face’ with no levity or room to let the scent breathe. It’s one of those gourmand accords that feels literal and doesn’t wear like a perfume. I’m in particular reminded of those cheap caramel sauces to put on ice cream. Wearing straight up ethyl maltol would probably be as pleasant as this. There is some nuttiness going on for sure, which I think is one of the only parts of the fragrance that I could see as a positive aspect.

      If this was the whole story, it would’ve been pretty bad, but nothing to write a harsh review for; cheap gourmands are a dime a dozen in this era of perfumery and as long as they are ‘cheap’ and not disguised in a €400 niche perfume, I tend to give them a break. However, almost instantly, an unexpectedly green coffee scent gets introduced. I say unexpected, because so many impressions that I see of Shaghaf Vanilla Toffee only speak of the sweetness (and coffee); only some mention this acrid, green side. To me, there’s clearly a strong green, cannabis-esque herbal tinge here. Like the often seen coffee – vetiver combination, but with a greener, damp vetiver is what it comes across as to my nose. Vetiver not being listed, I could point to cardamom as a culprit.

      Perhaps fans of cardamom, don’t find this as offensively bad as I do. Yet, there’s also a slight sour tinge to it all that deviates from your average cardamom or green spicy scent. It smells like the fragrance went bad. It clashes from beginning, until the drydown to my nose, as if someone threw 2 full-blown, non-compatible fragrances together. The longer the wear, the more the sweetness takes over, which is not that pleasant, but in this case, for the better.

      The untamed caramel helps in a sense; because it has to be equally loud to combat such a vibrant, contrasting combination that actually reminded me a tiny bit of Amouage Interlude Man‘s vibe with its oregano, spices and incense. I wonder if you’d mix Interlude with some ethyl maltol bomb from a brand like Theodoros Kalotinis, if you would end up in this direction.

      An unpleasant mix of scents, executed with about as little finesse as one can imagine… Shaghaf Vanilla Toffee shoots to the upper ranks of worst fragrances I’ve sampled in a long time.


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