Habanita

(Review of an EdT from the early 1980s) Little Havana is hardly little. There is a very big, old and wisened personality in this bottle. Parts of that personality are warm, friendly, and comforting, yet other parts are rough and tough, loud, and tell you it has seen its fair share of rough times and weathered through all of them - and you are not going to be able to command or intimidate it in the slightest. Habanita was born in a turbulent era, bookended by two world wars but riding a wave of industrialization and progress, both imparting just as much hope and confidence as they do disillusionment and skepticism. Habanita is a complicated individual. Habanita introduces itself to you with a firm and exuberant handshake, an immediate blast of fruity cured tobacco that launches into the air. Brown and green, vanillic and earthy, a touch sweet and a touch sour, dry yet honeyed. The tobacco is relieved of its starring role quite quickly by an extremely spicy heart of clove and nutmeg meaning to pull all moisture out of the air. Bold would be an understatement. It goes up your nose and down the back of your throat with a hot earthy fervor. The tobacco is still very present but it has new and very powerful foils competing for attention. Florals of rose, orris, heliotrope, orange blossom, ylang-ylang and who knows what else have this spicy boot heel on their throats; they’re there, but they are kept down and made quiet. It isn’t until the clove, nutmeg, and tobacco dispense towards the dry down that they are allowed to stand and speak up, but by then they too have mostly lost muster. The rose and orris have the most durability, and are better detectable in the vanillic, leathery, woody amber dry down. Patchouli, sandalwood, benzoin, leather, vetiver, cedar, wisps of oakmoss - every character in the amber and chypre sagas are here to some degree. Most readily apparent is the earthy and resinous vanilla thanks to the patchouli and benzoin, a very dark brown leather, creamy sandalwood, with small threads of green and damp oakmoss weaving its way in and around these other characters. Again, Habanita is a complicated individual. It’s a shape shifter. Changeling. Skinwalker. Protean. Throughout its very long wear time you will feel like you’re wearing several different perfumes. Of the many, many times I’ve worn Habanita nearly every time I’m curious what I’m going to get. It’s not safe, but it’s not dangerous either. It’s not courteous and pretty, it can be quite rude actually, but it’s not a lout hellbent on breaking public decency laws. It’s going to attract attention, and probably blow some minds in the process, so if you’re going to wear it you need to wear it boldly and confidently just like it is. There is no halfway point or timidity with Habanita, though on any given wearing it might present itself to you a bit differently than the last time. While people were rabbiting on about Guerlain and Coty in the early 20th century, Molinard was working away, out of site, like Dr. Frankenstein bringing his monster to life though with the full intention of releasing it upon the populace. That’s why I keep it chained up in my perfume cabinet.

Single-handedly, the most unique number I turn to in a certain mood. It grows and grows and grows on you until you and it become one. A true personality. Unforgettable.

I had a bottle in 2007 bought in Paris from a boutique. I tried for 2 years to use this perfume in the cold seasons. Maybe because I was in my early 20s, but it seemed a little mature to me, the kind of perfume that has an independent personality and if you don't have the same vibe, it dominates you and carries you, not the other way around. I don't know why, but I always associated the perfume with the color brown. I could only wear it if I was wearing something brown. Now, after so many years, I regret that I didn't appreciate it and gave it to someone else. It was the original version, or rather, not the reformulated one that is now in another bottle.

My love for Habanita only began earlier this year when my friend gifted me a bottle of the current EDP after a trip to Paris. I had never smelled it before, but it had always piqued my interest due to it's complex list of notes, dazzling black bottle, and its storied history. Once I fell into Habanita’s captivating abyss, I knew I needed to experience her in all her forms. I hunted down vintage bottles of the EDT and Extrait, drawn by the glowing praise surrounding earlier versions. When I finally found them, I had discovered my perfect perfume. Habanita is a true chameleon. Some days she reveals her softer side a sweet, slightly fruity, powdery veil that dries down into a boozy, vanillic amber. On other days she bares her carnal, animalic soul, emphasizing a leathery bitterness grounded in dry, smoky vetiver and oakmoss. To me, Habanita is one of the most underappreciated icons of perfumery free spirited and bold, a symbol of the rebellious women who dared to challenge the norms imposed upon them. She is both comfort and confidence, softness and strength. A fragrance that doesn’t ask to be noticed it demands to be perceived and respected.

Seamed stockings and an ocelot on your lap ala Fitzarraldo. A foggy lensed seductress in an oversized black hat. This fragrance is about as seductive as they come when you don’t believe the “wall” exists. A woman who’s aged gracefully by her never ending curiosity. This is the scent of her, of the collections of prized antiques she’s collected over many years, the ocelot on her lap, powder on her skin. (Lalique eau de toilette)

La differenza tra habanita vintage e quello moderno è che quello vecchio aveva un bouquet formato da piu di 600 ingredienti. Naturali. Quello moderno di sicuro non li ha. È un profumo molto cipriato, color ocra,ricorda qualcosa di soft che sta sulla pelle, sarà tabacco,sarà pelle scamosciata... nelle note si sente anche il lentisco. Lo sento decisamente meglio su un uomo.

I love this take on a chypre. Little bit of everything. It almost feels like biting into a pepper, and it's a little bit salty as well. I find it to be very vanillic and sweet especially layered

The amber note is perfect. It smells mysterious and alluring, I can't categorize the smell in anything except amber. It has elements of "spice", but doesnt smell spicy, and it is gently sweet (probably due to vanilla or the fruits). Exquisite, elegant, timeless. I feel like i could wear this now, in 10, 30, 60 years. A masterpiece in a bottle. I have this bottle from my mom, she doesn't use it anymore. I love the smell. The cap is lost, and at night it just gently radiates that smell throughout the room. I dont wear this perfume because it's so strong, and I'm afraid of wasting it. But i absolutely love it.

I was introduced to the legacy of Habanita through the current EdP and its sister Habanita L'esprit. While I immediately fell in love with Habanita L'esprit, I had the complete opposite reaction to Habanita. At that time I didn't even know what it was that caused such a visceral reaction. It truly repelled me. I couldn't so much as smell it from across the room without wanting to flee. I came to learn it was the mastic/lentisque. But thinking this was the core DNA of Habanita, aside from the powdery, vanillic leather, I considered it a lost cause. This was until I found a bottle of the vintage EdT. I figured I'd give it another try and rehome it once I'd confirmed the inevitable. Habanita and I are simply not meant to be. Wrong. This incarnation of Habanita differs from the modern interpretation in the most fundamental way. It's smoky, powdery, resinous and vanillic... but it is a leather fragrance. There's no trace here of what caused me to have that reaction to the EdP. This is the Habanita I was hoping to encounter and to me it actually has a lot more in common with Habanita L'esprit than the current EdP. This fragrance that I couldn't wait to pass on became a treasure to me the first time I put my nose to it. I was expecting the opposite, but vintage Habanita lives up to the myth and the praise. It is so beautifully blended and complete. After more than a century it's still around, never trying to make itself smaller or to fit the trend. It is patiently waiting for the right wearer to find their courage.

My first thought when smelling this was “This smells like Halloween.” It smells orange. Not like the fruit, but like a sweet pumpkin Yankee Candle in a craft store in October, the kind that has potpourri and strings of paper ghosts to hang on the porch and decorative gourds and Indian corn. It smells friendly and Midwestern and utterly, almost charmingly, uncool. Luca Turin describes it as “vanilla vetiver”, but I don’t really get the vetiver, or indeed anything distinctly leathery. I get vanilla/benzoin + something orange-brown, maybe tobacco, plus a waxy smell from the orris. It’s a solid block of orange potpourri-candle smell, all the way through, completely linear, for hours and hours even after you bathe. I think Habanita must have been the “slutty, bad-girl” perfume of 1921 – it was Mae West’s favorite, and apparently flappers used it to disguise the smell of cigarettes, hence the tobacco-evoking name – but now it smells not like “sex” or even like “Mom’s perfume” but like “Granny’s house,” volume set to 11. It evoked some pleasant nostalgia, but I probably won’t wear it again.

Can someone message me and explain to me how the vintage EDT differs from the modern EDP? Iove the EDP and as i looove vintage frags i am looking into getting the vintage formulation (found a great deal on the 80's/90's EDT). BUT, i have purchased vintages before because i was seduced by all these loving reviews online written by people i admire who have claimed the vintage to be 10 times better. However often, after purchase there would barely be a noticeble difference between the vintage and the modern. (take coco from chanel in example. I bought the vintage expecting it to be a ton richter and rounder while in comparison to the modern version the difference was minimal yet people wrote as if the modern one was incredibly unhinged). This time i would rather not spend the money if that were the case. So can someone out there tell me if the reviews speaking of the longevity being 10 x better in vintage and the scent being so much deeper, are actually true? There are just a few reviews out there who claim the difference is minimal. What are your thoughts? I would love to know!

Hello, Habanita! For some reason I skipped this until today, when it found it's way to me thanks to a dear friend that sent this to me as a gift, and I am truly impressed by this OG perfume version of it. This stuff is super strong, dark, resinous, very femme fatale and daring. No idea, how old this version is or what the newer versions smell like but after receiving this now I can really recommend trying it. I would say it's quite daring to wear in public, I would partially call it simular to the opulence of "Corday-Toujours Moi" but substract some of the incense, late base notes of the resinous first version of "Bal a Versailles" pure perfume (when the sweet notes have faded), the powdery almost birchy tobacco of "Tabac Blond-Caron" vintage version and the russian leather style of the castoreum-birch-resin heavy old version of "Piver-Cuir de Russie" essence. Sometimes I wonder what the women that wore this must have looked like or to which occasions they chose to wear this, as I find this quite dramatic and a perfect fit for "special occasions" and wild nights out. Lovely stuff!

I had purchased the modern formulation because it was cheap and I liked the bottle, but it is too sweet and aromachemical. The vintage is a wild ride. There are some citrus and florals but it is mainly a dark mossy dry vanillic tobacco leather that feels lit from within and up to no good. Note: spraying this is a commitment for at least 24 hours. I have been repeatedly surprised at how wild some of these perfumes targeted to women 100 years ago were so brazen. We act like we are so free now, but we are obsessed with conformity. Even I don't know if I could wear this in public.

Craaaazy perfume. This is as old-school as it gets. I got a miniature EDT from Vinted, and it's perfectly intact. Smokey, sweet, explosive, dirty and boozy. It reminds me of Tabu, not that it smells the same, but the style and effect of the perfume. Not sure I can pull it off outside my apartment (same as Tabu).

Very old, and very pretty. Something slightly medicinal about it, dare I say, geriatric, but not really. It’s just ‘old world’ it’s literally like putting Guerlain’s Shalimar and L’huere Bleue into one fragrance. For powder lovers only!

Don’t be fooled by vintage Habanita puritans! The modern EDP is a HEAVY nod to the vintage juice! The vintage has a smoky leather-like undertone that is very prominent among the backdrop of powdery vanilla and raspberry. This stuff is pretty much permanent on whatever you spray it on! Lovely with “red painted claws” it’s statement-making, but with a soft fur on the outside (the powder). If you can only find the modern EDP you’ll still be getting the Habanita experience. Molinard is still considered ‘niche’ and is still privately producing their time curated fragrances. The vintage is on steroids and the modern EDP is a MINISCULE amount softer. 😂 Beware spraying either with abandon! You’ll fumigate yourself and others around you. Habanita still dresses in black. 😘

My favorite part of this perfume was the big opening-dry, Amber, powdery vanilla. Gosh, it’s so pretty. It is powerful in the opening, and won’t be for everyone, as it definitely has a vintage flair. As it dries down, it tames itself but retains that dry amber powdery essence I so enjoyed. It hung around on my skin for about 5 hours, but was intimate on me after the 3 hour mark. I only had a sample someone had shared with me of this, but I will grab a bottle if I ever come across one! This perfume is perfect for the Christmas season.

This is for the old juice that gets oxidized perfectly in patina color. Top notes are getting vague. I can barely smell riped fruit let alone bergamot and then the show was taken by powdery leather, majestically. Such alluring and mysterious smooth leather that feel velvety thanks to orris. This beautiful state stays so long before animalic musk emerge to its drydown. Habanita is indeed a landmark of perfume artistry

A fire made out of ebony wood. This is my impression. Fire. Wood. Exotic country. High temperature. Night. Love. The one-liners on the Pros list describe this unique magic potion very well. It's shocking, but stunningly beautiful and complex.

Testing again from a sample of the vintage formula. Two words: melancholic & mysterious. Imagine the resolute, steely exterior of a woman. She has seen some things in life. But there’s this soft and vulnerable side to her when she is comfortable enough to let her guard down with you. However, not just anyone has the privilege of seeing this softer side of her. That’s the way Habanita unfolds herself. She will eventually with time open up and reveal all her mysterious secrets to you. Resinous vanilla, dark leather, and powdery florals. Delicious and sexy combination. I have always been attracted to fragrances that are wayyyy before my time. Perhaps I was born in the wrong era. Habanita just ticks all my boxes. And man do I have a type! I am happy that the fruity, citrus top notes are fairly understated on me and that it keeps the most mysterious alluring notes front and center. This is a beautiful work of art. A Timeless masterpiece!

Femme Fatale Russian Spy. Beautiful powdery heliotrope and orris, makes the leather slightly dusty, almost suede, slightly animalic imo, humble florals, vanilla weaving through each of the notes, the vetiver makes everything a little more robust. I know the history of this perfume tells us it was created for women intended to mask the smell of cigarettes but I can only imagine how delicious pipe tobacco, cigarette and cigar smoke would smell lacing through this fragrance. The benzoin and musk in the base is sweet, fluffy, heavenly. Not the way you’d describe a femme fatale Russian Spy but the composition creates a harmony that flickers between feminine and masculine, soft and rugged. Such a gorgeous and unique perfume. I’m beginning to really enjoy leather x orris x iris. This vintage is marketed as an EDT concentration but has the longevity of a really decent EDP. I could still smell it around my neck and décolleté the following day albeit a cozy, musky, warm, vanillic and slightly resinous skin scent.

ok, am outstanding perfume but as i know it was the very first vetiver perfume for women in the history but fragrantica doesn’t mention the vetiver with the ingredients!! am having lovely time now with la cologne and i advice you guys to have if the original one is hard on you :)

Gorgeous powdery fragrance. The orris and leather are two most prominent notes for me. They make the fragrance very unique, spicy, sexy, powdery and vintage. The fragrance does come out a little strong and a little too masculine for me. I think the ambery leather note is what makes it a little too blunt and straightforward for me. But definitely a very unique fragrance!

Oh, sigh…there used to be the best perfume store in Paris called ‘Catherine Perfumerie’, now closed. Tucked away in a Passage across from the Hôtel Meurice, tiny, and filled to the brim on revolving (think vertical racks like the dry cleaners have) shelves with 1000’s of perfumes. Discounted prices, and you’d leave with $100 worth of samples easily. Not like current clerks who act like giving ‘A’ sample vial is directly coming out of their paycheck! And the vendeuses who worked there knew, with encyclopedic knowledge and acumen, perfumes. I travelled a lot for business and would always stop there to stock up on my favorites: Caleche, Amazone, Ô de Lancôme, Mon Peche extrait, My Sin…and my new best friend, Habanita. I first smelled it on a co-worker. It drifted after her whenever she walked by—subtle, soft, mysterious. I was hooked. It is a divisive fragrance, as you’ve probably read here on other posts. Some claim it smells musty, old lady, dated. Dated, perhaps. It is certainly nothing like the current affaire for bubble-gummy, saccharine sweet fruit fragrances. All of which, across the board, to me smell formulaic, repetitive, utterly forgettable. Habanita harkens back to when women wore long gloves and chic black wool crepe cocktail dresses, with sleek up-dos and understated jewelry. Where heads turned because a woman entering was so quietly elegant, you just had to take it all in. Perfumes in this era never, or at least rarely, screamed. Wearing Habanita, if it meshes with your chemistry, is a veiled, wafting fragrance that trails you rather than announces you. It is powdery soft, but then comes the woody leather spine that holds up through the day. I was often asked, at the end of the day, long after I could no longer smell it, “What are you wearing?” Id always ask, “Is it something you like? Or want to avoid?” They always said they loved it, or wanted to get some for their wife or girlfriend. My affinity for this mysterious, seductive scent has lasted nearly 40 years, and I still love it for evenings out. I miss the days when people behind the counter were experts in their field, not just their particular line, and not incentivized by promos and contests to “sell the most”. The only American counterpart to Habanita was Ralph Lauren’s ‘Tuxedo’, sadly discontinued and the dupes smell nothing at all like the original. Happily, the various reformulations of Habanita have stayed true to the original I bought in 1982! If you like evocative, elegantly mysterious fragrances, give this a try. The EDT is great for daytime, but the EDP or parfum really shine at night.

I bought a decant of the EDP and one of the vintage EDT for comparison. I liked neither on first test. Two days ago I tried the EDP (which I understand to be a slightly different scent profile from the EDT) and… yes? Yes! I now recall stepping into a bodega-type store in Houston, Texas, back when I smoked, and buying a pack of cigarettes from somewhere overseas. They had a scent not unlike this—sweet, powdery, exotic. The EDP is powdery, but sexy, sexy powder. It smells sophisticated and I can certainly see it perfuming cigarettes, although there is no tobacco in the composition. It will take a few more days for us to get to know each other—there’s more under the powder that I haven’t sussed out yet. Musk? Leather? It’s smooth and warm and yet also strangely fresh (but perhaps that’s a scent memory of my 20s). Curiosity now demands that I give the EDT a second sniff too. For science!

This is okay at best. There’s an element in this that smells like cleaning fluid. If you want a nicer floral combination that is green and white I recommend Quelques Fleurs by Houbigant which is cleaner and more elegant without the cleaning fluid smell.

I can't give a list of notes that emerge over the time wearing it but I can say that putting it on is exactly and I mean EXACTLY like walking into a house or an apartment you're going to rent and seeing a mysterious wooden cubby in the hallway. It's exquisite construction is remarkable so you ask the property manager about it. "No idea" he flatly states. "They all have 'em." After living there for a while the cubby blends into the background but every once in a while you pull the doors open and wonder what it could be. Google is no help. Then one day you host a party and invite your coworkers. Babette from accounting brings her boyfriend who turns out to be an eccentric, quirky man with a beard trimmed to form a perfect point, his moustache into two perfect erect curls. On your 15th trip from the kitchen to the living rooom you pass him holding forth in the hallway next to the cubby. He explains in delighted detail how the cubby was constructed, why it is so ornate and prominent and the absolutely obsolete and currently obscure yet at that time commonplace and daily use it had 100 years earlier. From then on when you touch the cubby's carved wood you become deeply aware of the gulf of time separating you from an era that had such a deep need for something like this. For a moment the ghosts of the people who used it then seem to gather and stand with you. It is a beautiful thing, a bit strange to those who live in a different time, but beautiful nonetheless. It definitely does evolve over the time you're wearing it and I think it goes through every single fragrance "type" out there as it evolves. Each stage is beautiful--powdery, floral, leather/woodsy. It is always mysterious though. Always hard to describe and to conceptualize. But always beautiful.

Molinard - Habanita (1921) EdT, Vintage from the 1980s, splash "I see you undressing me with your eyes... Don't stop now, you're only half done...". Every year on my birthday, I decide to be extravagant and douse myself in a vintage collectable from my little stash of treasures. I had a few in mind for 26, but as fate worked its magic, a beautiful vintage splash bottle of Molinard Habanita in EdT, which I'd ordered from a fantastic seller on Etsy (Hanna if you're reading this, you're an absolute star) based out in Italy. What would you know, the gods that govern logistics and international shipping decided to bring in this bundle of wonderfulness on my birthday, and I simply couldn't be happier. The most sumptuous packaging befitting Habanita, from the 'roses on black' gift wrapping paper, the gorgeous bows, the little ornamentation, the gilded envelope and golden seals, I only wish I could've done an unboxing for ya'll because Hanna's packaging was so grand. She even sent me the gift of a necklace for my dear mum, since I'd told her during one of our conversations that it was from my mum that I get my taste in perfumery, for she had wondered how a 25-year-old lad came to love a grand dame of the likes Habanita. I have forever been in love with Habanita, I have it in the sublime, and very true to the original, EdP recreation and in the newly imagined La Cologne as well. Before I delve deep into the vintage, I must say that Habanita in EdP as it is now available remains a very successful reformulation and is oft praised by many a critic as being a very close approximation of the vintage EdT, which has been discontinued for a while now. So fret not if you can't get your hands on a vintage EdT or Parfum, the EdP is a good reach too. History, the beginnings are interesting because Habanita was never really conceived as a perfume, it was supposed to scent cigarettes. Just so that the rebellious flappers of the 20s could appear elegant whilst being chain smokers and not simply reek of stale cigarette smoke. This is the very first 'tobacco' perfume, but it doesn't contain a hint of tobacco. Though having said that I think that honour technically goes to Caron's Tabac Blond, I'm not too sure what the general consensus on this is. You could buy sachets of Habanita to put in your cigarette cases (so that the scent would permeate into your cigarettes) or a tiny liquid vial with a glass rod to drip a little of the liquid directly into a cigarette and thus perfume the smoke that emanated. If only millennial-cool Emily knew that her great-grandma Helen was the original vape girl, oh well. I believe somewhere down the line people simply started using Habanita to scent themselves directly, which is when Molinard decided to bring it out formally as a perfume to be applied on oneself, 1921 being the widely accepted launch year for the perfume. To me, Molinard exemplifies the true essence of French perfumery from Grasse, with Habanita boasting a supposed 600 ingredients in all, working to create a nuanced melange of sultry, purring notes and accords. Bottle, it is a gorgeously moulded Lalique flacon, an original creation of Rene Lalique, with the murals of many a lady in their nakedness cheekily attempting to cover themselves with shawls. Probably my favourite perfume bottle design. The screw cap is beaten golden metal and filigreed. It is a splash bottle. Scent, in this vintage EdT, it opens rather differently compared to the EdP, the butch Leather is front and centre from the absolute start, with the Galbanum, Petit Grain and most importantly the Mastic gum resin peeking in shyly, the Leather decides to let the top notes sway in and out of stage curtains giving you a momentary freshness from the Petit Grain (far too shortlived) the tiniest bit of mildly green-resinous-dustiness ala Galbanum and the Mastic. Note: Mastic is a resin from Yemen, obtained from a shrub and smells a bit like pine tree resin and follows after olibanum in scent profile. Milky tree sap? The Leather in here is NOT the oddness that prevails in modern perfumery and does in no way smell like car seats and the like. It smells like Leather that is worn against bare skin, salted by sweat and has a slightly funky overtone to it thanks to the undertone of Musk. Mind you the original formula for Habanita is a 'Russian Leather' base, it was never a simple Leather construct to begin with. But the heart is important because it is what helps restrain the otherwise potent Leather accord, the Nutmeg and Heliotrope are most potent giving it the signature spiced powder feel. Habanita is spicy and it is powdery, of its Guerlain peers Shalimar and L'Heure Blue, and distant Caron cousin Tabac Blond, this is by far the most focussed on the spice of the three and there is unparalleled depth and floral darkness here. There is an oiliness from the dense and rather indolic florals, the Grasse jasmine, the Rosa centifolia and Ylang-Ylang bring in the sweetness but the 'sweetness is cut' and grounded by the Vetiver and Cedarwood in the heart. There's enough in here to tame any manner of sweetness. There's also an odd Raspberry note which plays a very adept game of 'hide and seek' and is only perceptible when your skin warms up. This Raspberry note is nowhere to be found in the EdP. The powderiness here is thick, in a mature and rather sensual way, there is something about this that would make one think of the smell of well-worn and broken-in Leather which has been powdered to mask the scent of wear. The base is heavy and with a Benzoin-forward Amber, a perceptible dose of Vanilla, Patchouli, Oakmoss, and the aforementioned Musk which ISN'T 'clean' thankfully. Feel, this has never been a simple, decent fragrance, in every day and age this has been the scent of the morally dubious seductress, it is only for the femme fatale and she doesn't border on the spectrum of the good or the kind, bad is in her bone and she's smirking at you even when you tell her she owns your heart, she loves you sure, but with irony. The powder is proper and the leather is lustful. Habanita's elegance is only skin deep, a deeply disturbing voluptuousness lies barely hidden from the discerning eye. This is probably why I relate immensely to Habanita, there is a side to me that is prim, proper and preppy but that's just the face that deals with the world at large and there is a darker bit of debauched longing lurking deep beneath, if you've been privileged enough to see that side, I've probably marked you with my teeth or nails, and if I've been subtle I've left you with a bruised heart. Your very own, The Perfume Vigilante

Before the musk and woods take over, the opening to this perfume fruity. My nose is drawn to the contrast between bitter and sweet, rough and silky. There is this shape changing experience. I am always delighted to meet in a fragrance: flowers and fruits which peep through, just to be hidden by all the deep brooding darkness that is at the foundation. This scent is powdery, with a nasty civet undertone, particularly in the dry down. The lifespan, projection, and silage are all exceptional. Masterpiece!

don’t be put off by the initial blast of baby powder. there’s more to come: green resins, soft spices, plush incense, smoky vanilla and sandalwood, dried flowers dusted in yet more powder… not gonna lie: the powder never fully dissipates; it merely becomes a veil through which you get hints of the warm, velvety mystery that is Habanita. strictly speaking, i suppose she is an oriental — but she’s the weirdest oriental i’ve encountered so far. Habanita might need to be in her own category. i put her away a few weeks ago, with a sigh. all i got that first try was baby powder and cigarette smoke. pointless. but then, recently, i tried Opus 1144, and it immediately reminded me of Habanita. but Opus 1144 doesn’t smell like baby powder OR cigarettes, so i realised there must have been more going on. some perfumes are temperamental. this is definitely one of them. give her a minute; she’s feeling herself. musical accompaniment : Bloodletting (album) by Concrete Blonde /current edp