Asad Zanzibar

Usually most of the complaints on this I hear are about how weird it smells, to me if you like coconut you will probably like this, overall not too bad

I really enjoy this scent, only downside from it is that it does not last long on me, after around an hour I barely smell it on my skin, I really enjoy the scent though. Sometimes I get a hint of citrus on this one that quickly dissolves into spicy/pepper like tones. Coconut is there but after a while it turns into this vanilla like scent that works with summer days very well. Strong 6/10. Again, if it lasted longer id give this an 8.5.

Reading through the comments here, made me feel compelled to give my two scents as well. The hate towards this scent is completely overblown. I blind bought this with the expectation of it being a sunscreen scent, like Piz Buin, and from that angle you can say that I was disappointed, because this smells nothing like any sunscreen lotion I have ever come across. But, looking at the scent head on, this is an absolutely wonderful scent! The opening is fresh, sweet and powerful, but not in a cloying way. And there is currently a heatwave here in Europe at the moment. The coconut in it is great, but differs from the traditional coconut note, perhaps due to it coming from coconut water. From here it slowly, but surely, evolves as it dries down. It becomes more "mature" as especially the iris and lavender notes moves to the front, until the vanilla note takes over and drives it home. The salt and incense notes are absent for me, but that only makes it better. It is an unique scent, that does not smells like anything I have smelled before, which is not a bad thing. My wife pretty much thinks that a lot of my fragrances smells the same, but thing one she picked up right away and complemented. The performance is fantastic with easily 10 hours of longevity, with great projection throughout th day. For the price of just a little over 20 euros, I think this is a no brainer to add to a collection, and I would even call it blind buy safe.

This fragrance catches a lot of hate, and honestly, I think if a bunch of TikTok creators started glazing it, people would be singing a completely different tune. Now, is it the best fragrance out there? No. Is it the highest quality? No. But is it as bad as people make it out to be? I don’t think so. The biggest thing is you’ve got to like mature coconut. I’m not talking about that fresh green coconut. I’m talking about the brown one with all the hair on it. If you crushed that up, blended it with a little sea salt, that’s pretty much the vibe you’re getting. Here’s what’s interesting. Most people I’ve talked to that actually own this fragrance will tell you it’s nothing special. They’re not sitting there acting like it’s a masterpiece. But they’ll also tell you, “Man, this thing gets me compliments.” And that’s really where this fragrance shines. It’s one of those scents where you may not be blown away wearing it, but the people around you seem to like it a whole lot more than you do. Also, to my nose, the new Valentino Purple Melancholia has some of that same DNA in the opening. I’m not saying they’re the same fragrance, because they’re not. But if you absolutely can’t stand this one, then there’s a pretty good chance you won’t care for the opening of Purple Melancholia either.

I get Powdery floral medicinal peppery accord Cold musky lotion accord Powdery creamy light vanilla

It’s neither an exceptional vanilla nor an exceptional iris, let alone a masterful combination of both. Coconut is really the main player here. It does kind of smell like a dessert.. crushed nuts in a coconut-vanilla pudding. I imagine it’d smell best in the air as opposed to upclose and I can see how it might be off-putting if you overspray. It’s not bland but it doesn’t say anything interesting tbh.. and it’s sort of feminine-leaning. All in all, not for me, although I respect the shot in the dark. I think it’s the coconut overdose, as I detect no iris whatsoever.. a vanilla-iris with a coconut facet would’ve worked better imo. Aaaaaah I’m being haunted by the Ghost of Weird Zanzibar Reviews.. I can’t help it, I’m sorry, I really trieeedddd AAAAAHHHH: it smells how I imagine breast milk would taste like to an infant.

Maybe everybody hates this fragrance, but it gets me compliments every time I wear it. So, it’s not that bad after all when you look at the compliment stats.

Es una MIERDA, prefiero untarme mierda en mi cuello ante ponerme esa maldita cosa inútil, la peor creación de lattafa, eso me da cancer y emorragia anal y olfativa.

Bought this almost two years ago and hated it to my core. It was pepper and who knows what else. Then I completely abandoned it at the far back corner of my perfume wardrobe and kept going with more appealing fragrances. Today, in high heat, with over 34°c and 75% humidity I wore it again. No pepper. No weird stuff. What I do get is dry coconut and some incense in the drydown. Not at all feminine but nothing too masculine. Totally unisex. Soft, so soft. Understand. Melancholic perhaps. And against all odds, someone paid me a compliment. She called it soft and clean and comforting. I had it on for about 7 hours at that point so longevity is pretty good. I'm now 14 hours after applying it in the morning. It's a skin scent but not a faint barely there kind of skin scent. If you're willing to give it time to find its footing, this is such a great niche quality on a budget perfume. If not, save your coins.

this fragrance pisses me off. who the fuck greenlit this?

This is not as bad as I thought it was when I first got it. After a couple of months, I started wearing it confidently. I actually love it and use a base of Monocline 05 to smooth out the initial strong opening. I love the longevity, and it goes well with casual wear. I get a clean and fresh vibe from this. One spray behind the neck, one on each inner wrist and one in lower torso on my shirt and I am all set.

I'm just gonna be honest...: Not all perfumes should be mass appealing(obviously), it's as subjective as every other thing on this planet. To me this is NOT tropical, it's smooth, sweet, slightly soapy, and pencil-shaving woody. it is beyond creative. this for sure doesn't have the highest quality ingredients, for 10-30 bucks that's a given. but the story that Fanny Bal has put together? Genuinely worth tuning into. Smooth, powdery vanilla, with a woody classy backbone. This smells versatile, unique, and appeals to those open that can get behind it. And isn't that the point? It's so easy to convince yourself whether you like or hate a fragrance before you actually can form an opinion. C*m is insane, i just got to say that. Disliking is absolutely ok. But PLEASE don't discourage experimentation, it'll only hurt the world of parfumerie. I'm sorry for the long comment i just had to get this off my chest. I LIKE ASAD ZANZIBAR. there, i said it.

NOT A REVIEW If you started a hate campaign and actually PAID people to hate on a cologne online, it would still not get as much creative and passionate hate as this legend right here. Can’t wait to get it! It’ll either be a masterpiece ahead of its time that will be mourned and reveled when it gets discontinued, or it’ll suck donkey ass in a way perhaps no other cologne does which is an achievment in and of itself.. who wants a boring cologne wardrobe anyway. The least I want this to be is ‘fine’ and ‘meh’, or just ‘bad’ instead of “the worst smell in the world”. That being said, some of the people on this website need to do some soul-seeking. I don’t want y’all on Fragrantica no more.. “stop it, get some help”. Put the phone away, go outside, touch grass, breath fresh air, take in morning sunlight, fix your sleep, pick up a hobby.. I suggest chess, but go to your local or college club instead of playing on the internet.. we’re gonna be off the internet for a while.. calisthenics is another good option.. go for daily runs, eat healthy, tidy up your home, buy some books.. but like ‘good books’, not genre flicks or cheap non-fiction.. get a plant and make a habit out of watering it everyday, have real conversations and connections with real people in the real world, let yourself get bored then feel and process any hanging emotions you’ve been ignoring... then come back after 3 months and read what you wrote on this internet platform about an actual bottle of cologne. Don’t thank me, you’ve done the work. Now move on with your life.. I wish you well.

Not a safe blind buy but I like this. Watery coconut with some dry vanilla, lavender and iris. I think people either expect tropical sunscreen sweet, or a classy iris, but this is just a dry, walnut-y vanilla. I think it's somewhat in the vein of LeMale EDT but with coconut instead of pear.

This is not for blind buy. It's smell like a medicine, very disappointed. May be good for someone who like these type of notes.

Guysssss Zanzibar was REMADE recently The negative comments are from when it literally smelled like "s*men" and "bad milk"... I just smelled the REMADE Zanzibar in Lattafas official store in Dubai ... And it smells NOTHING like the c*m smell... Please understand !!

Please let this macerate before you review! I love fragrances with coconut and I was overjoyed to get my sniffer on this. It smells like a sweet milky coconut that leans masculine. Its not a clone of anything so you will smell unique for a low price point but please remember to MACERATE if you don't have the patience its unfortunate that you will miss out on a really nice fragrances. 9/10

I personally do not get why so many people hate this fragrance. I say that both men and woman can easily wear this, the mix of vanilla, coconut, and iris is very sweet and smooth and I see it was a unisex smell. My bottle i brought all the way back in around September of last year, I haven’t tried it in quite a while but when I wore it regularly i definitely had to overspray because the scent went away after some time, I guess that it lasts longer not that it’s been sitting for a while. On this article it says it’s more for summer time wear but I heavily disagree, I wore this lots when it was colder out and it went great with the snowy weather, again the vanilla is the strongest note above all the other ones here and it just smells great all around, don’t listen to the hive mind haters all over. Lasts around 6 hours last I tried which was months ago, projects decently, for $30 it’s awesome and I say both genders can easily wear this. God bless

Type of scent that’d be nice to smell in the air from someone else. But up close on my skin it’s synthetic, harsh and a very cheap Vanilla dry down, which is kind of nice, but if you’ve been smelling fragrance for 10+ years you pick up on it straight away and just can’t handle it. I feel like this is trying to impersonate JPG Le Male Le Parfum with the Vanilla and Iris but with an added Cocount twist. I like the idea of what it’s trying to do, but to experienced noses this will come off as very “screechy” and “plastic like” Edit: after being on my skin 4 hours. Yeah this isn’t it bruv, this is not it. It’s not pleasant and has a subtle “vomit” or very acidic note in the mid to dry down. I would not purchase this. Save your pennies and just buy LMLP or one of the other designer scents with Vanilla/Coconut

#137 of My Fragrance Journey - Asad Zanzibar: The island that splits opinion before it splits skin This one doesn't sit still. It doesn't make its case by standing firm - it pulls you into something that keeps shifting underneath you, and the rules change while you're mid-breath in it. It opens dry and sharp, black pepper doing its best impression of a boardroom - commanding, almost cold. Then on skin it just… softens. Warm salt and musk come up underneath, and suddenly it's not cold at all, it's unguarded. Almost like watching someone mid-argument change their mind. On paper, it reads airy, aromatic, well-mannered. On skin, it's thicker than that - cream and spice, much more intimate than the first ten seconds promised. Then comes the part that's going to split people right down the middle - coconut and raw sea salt, but not the kind you're picturing. Forget sunscreen, forget the cocktail-bar cliché. This is something stranger. Mineral, slightly lactonic, glowing in this odd way - like watching a storm build over a coastline you can't quite see clearly yet. Pepper sits in the background like wet pilings. Iris shows up, but barely, more like texture than a note you could point to and name. It binds the salt to your skin without ever turning powdery. I'll be honest, the coconut-salt thing isn't creamy or tropical in the way most reviews of stuff like this promise. It's a little uneasy, actually - there's tension in it, the same kind you get from something like Fusion d'Issey Extrême. It projects, it leaves a trail, and the heart of it sticks around longer than you'd expect. People talk about iris-and-coconut like it's going to be powdery and pretty. On me, the iris barely registers. What you actually get is this creamy, salty, slightly off atmosphere that doesn't smell like anything else I own. That's worth something on its own. But it doesn't keep climbing forever - that's the thing. All that loud, untamed sillage eventually runs into a wall of pretty conventional vanilla, and the wild edges get sanded down into something a lot easier to wear. Safer. The mineral tension cools off into sweetness, which makes it more casual but also feels like a small retreat after everything it just put you through. For a lot of people, that boldness in the middle is exactly the point. It gets something most tropical fragrances completely miss - islands aren't just fruit and white sand, they're salt and humidity and sharp green things and sea air sitting on your skin. This one's honest about that mess instead of smoothing it over. It feels less like landing in Zanzibar and more like remembering it weeks later, half-accurately. Most people will already know if they love or hate this by the time they get to the vanilla. It's not a subtle fragrance, and it never pretends to be. It's not flawless, it's not for everyone, but it's memorable - loud, a little messy, genuinely its own thing. For what it costs, that willingness to be weird is worth the ride, even if not every mile of it lands. It ends up feeling like an island at dusk - tense, a bit unpredictable, with a strange pull that doesn't let go once the sun's down. Vibe: storm light over a coastline, salt and pepper on warm skin Performance: loud and persistent, with a heart that outlasts expectation Fit: for anyone who wants tropical without the cliché - and doesn't mind a little friction Does this read as Zanzibar to you, or more like a memory of it that's gone slightly wrong in the best way? More scent stories and visuals on Instagram - @lavendercloudsjd

First impressions. Seeing all the negative comments, I somehow knew this would be a worthy blind buy for me, and I was not wrong. I haven't smelled anything like it. I don't get any specific notes or accords, but I do get a synaesthetic impression of a luminescent light gray or off-white matte sphere. Like a futuristic ice cream scoop, but warm and dry. Like a "moloko plus" cocktail from Korova Milk Bar, a bit of comforting mother's milk before ultraviolence. It is indeed lactonic, but there's nothing sour about it, so I don't get the sour milk complaints. Rather, there is something futuristic in addition to the powdery milkiness, like the sizzling plastic or hot wire smell from ELDO Ghost in The Shell. Or some kind of synthetic office carpeting. It could be a clever combination of lavender, coconut and salt, but it's so well blended that I don't perceive any individual components, I just get the general effect. It's definitely unisex, even leaning into feminine. It's very sweet, but not quite gourmand (due to the futuristic aspect). It's comes across as clean. And it could be a summer scent in the way you could wear Fahrenheit in the heatwave.

This is not a bad fragrance.. not at all but it will probably miss your expectations. The dry down reminds me of Liam by Lattafa. When you first spray this, it starts with a fresher less spicy opening than Liam but they dry down with some notable similarities. Not everyone is a fan of Liam (someone traded me their bottle because they didn't love it).. but I quite like Liam,,. I think Lattafa took that scent and attempted to make a fresher warmer-weather version. Liam is a superior fragrance to Zanzibar. That said, Liam is a fall/winter choice with its spicy comfortable sweetness. Zanzibar attempts this for warm weather but is too peppery and incensy to be a summer freshie. The pencil shaving hint of Cedar in the mid is a bit too strong, and I can see why this gets the hate. That smell is gone by the dry down. (Liam removes that pencil shavings smell with an extra dose of woods and tonka sweetness.) I do really like the dry down of Zanzibar. I find it comfortable and relaxing. I'd probably wear this to bed instead of wearing it to a summer party. It was troublesome for marketing and influencers to tie Zanzibar with coconut and summer vibes. Its going to miss those expectations (this is why you don't listen to those boneheads) I like it and the performance and projection is solid - so IMO its good, but when do you wear it? If you happen to see Zanzibar Limited Edition it is far different. It follows the Invictus Parfum vibe and works well as a summer freshie. Limited Edition is what they should have released in Zanzibar to reach the freshie fans with the Asad line.

I've received today and the first impression is not good, at all. I've spayed 10 times, in the air, after the one in my arm, and I'll let it settle down in a dark closet hoping that it will change for better. Right now I don't want to wear it. I've waited for the dry and it's not better. I should not blind buy it. Let's cross the fingers

First of all, it’s not nearly as bad as you’re saying here, but we’re used to this site making completely false claims. Second, you wrote that this perfume isn’t projective—in other words, to put it mildly, this perfume is very strong; you can smell it from a meter and a half away. Third, considering the price, this is a very high-quality fragrance, so stop spouting this nonsenses what some of you comments here

I thought Riffz Freeze was the worst fragrance I had ever smelled, but holy hell, Zanzibar managed to be way worse. It literally smells like a mix of piss and petrol. It is an incredibly harsh, synthetic mess with absolutely zero smoothness or balance. Within minutes, it gave me a pounding headache, and I had to immediately run to the sink to wash it off.

It literally smells like piss on my skin

This is an absolute beautiful fragrance; it takes me back to late dinner on the beach of Hawaii. I can't stop smelling it on my skin. This is what it smells like when you have an evening dinner on the beach of an island like Hawaii and you are surrounded by the island dancers around your table. The moodiness from the incense is there reminding you of the torch lighting, but so is the coconut water and salt from the beach. I spray it all the time just so it can take me back there. It sits so beautiful on my skin and yes, it's absolutely unisex and I share this fragrance with my partner.

Genuinely, what the hell is this 😂😂 This stuff just makes me throw up, spoiled coconut and milk

straight up medicine. worst smell i ever tried on, unfortneatly i put it on directly on skin

You have no idea how happy I am to be writing a POSITIVE review of Lattafa's Asad Zanzibar!👍🏿 I have owned this fragrance for about a year and a half now, and, truthfully speaking, it's been nearly a year since I last gave it a try. Like SO MANY others, I was almost disgusted with what I was smelling, when I first blind-bought it -- the spoiled milk smell was pervasive in the opening, making it nearly impossible to wear. Being relatively new to fragrances at that time, I had, though, already seen how maturation/maceration truly could change a fragrance, so, not being one to throw anything away that I spent my money on, I let it sit for about 3 months, then, tried again. Pretty much, same results, but, it did seem as though the extreme ugliness of the spoiled milk smell had lessened somewhat...still, though, not a tolerable smell, just to get to a better dry-down. Fast forward to today, almost a year later, and, for whatever reason, something prompted me to pull it out, see if anything had improved. HALLELUJAH! It has finally arrived! Is it the best thing I own...no. But, it is now a really good, creamy type of coconutty-vibe, and, there is ZERO trace of the spoiled milk smell. I can truly say that I suspect that the majority of these negative reviews haven't given it the patience that I have, nor would/should they be expected to, I guess. But, as luck would have it, I am so glad that I waited, because, this finished product is much better than anything you're gonna get for that low price. 8.5 out of 10!