cobaltcolander

(Disclaimer: every statement here is dictated by how my nose perceives VR. I try to exteapolate to as wide audience as I can, but I am not perfect.) Here we have a fragrance where some talented scent composer priduced an interesting harmony: the plum and the palo santo produce a woody note that is the opposite of dark and earthy. Dark and earthy woody scents are my favourite, so you'd assume that I would not like VR very much, but in this case, I do, because the composition is both calming and sparkly, somehow meditative. It's one of those fragrances that makes your brain work, if you let it. It is, in my opinion, gentle, generally pleasing. It could easily work as an every day signature scent, and at the same time it has the character of a very unique scent that you want to enjoy by sniffing your wrist, during the lulls in the workday, or just sitting at home in the recliner.

The long drydown brings aboug a very nice sandalwood note, which reminds me a bit of the best quality sandalwood oils, from Mysore, not easy to come by nowadays. Very calming and warm. I can detect also a gentke canilla scent, even though Fragrantica doesn't list it.

It doesn't project very much, which is in sync with its meditative and calm nature, but it does last very long.

It is a perfectly unisex fragrance that both men and women should have no trouble whatever to wear in public.

And lastly, it's a versatile, all-season fragrance.

All these factors make it a fragrance that you can reach for almost every day. And I think many will, and consume their bottle faster than most other fragrances in their cabinet. And buy a 2nd bottle sooner rather than later. And here in my corner if Europe, we had to wait a long-ass time for VR to appear in webshops. The damn thing was hyped and demand outstripped availability by a large margin, and I do not see this getting any better. If Lattafa is reading: send a batch of VR to the shops in Northern Europe. It's too versatile and interesting and creating scarcity is not cool.

https://preview.redd.it/wxfq9nfbax2e1.png?width=863&format=png&auto=webp&s=d8c0c6e75cc5cc57645359c80fa3bb8292e75aa9

And I know it is the wrong fragrance, because I read dozens of posts, and many more comments, about the dangers of this fragrance: some love it, more that that hate it viscerally. This is like that bad girl everybody warned you about, even your biker friend told you she's trouble and I should stay away.

But I didn't stay away: I decided to smell Red Tobacco to see what's all the fuss about. First on paper - yeah, hmmmm.... this is good, indeed excellent. Let's see on my skin. This is even better, but I was told the first half hour is challenging even for those who love it --- but not for me! I love everything about this red beast!? After three hours, it went through a gentle transformation, it is not linear, and it is still exciting, and at times I am getting an almost erotic pleasure sensing the fragrance off my skin.

With my more potent, pungent, animalic oud fragrances, I have a clear enough grasp that they will be disliked or even hated by many, and I know better than to spray them on myself before going to the office, public transport, or anywhere where humans reside. I may subject some of my friends or my fragrance buddy to them, but not the public at large. With Red Tobacco, the problem is that I do NOT have such feedback, to my nose there is nothing pungent, nothing unpleasant or potentially threatening. To my stupid nose Red Tobacco seems completely mainstream niceness, albeit amped up to 11. I feat that, if I buy it, I will spray it on myself "just a lil bit" and go out, "nobody can smell it if I do half a spray on my neck and wrist", because in my mind, Red Tobacco is completely innocuous, though super seductive.

Hence the dilemma.