Hawas tropical opens up with a sweet coconut juice with mint along it. The coconut isn’t a sunscreen type like Creed VIW amd the mint isn’t like xerjoff renaissance but rather a sweet, playful, green fruit scent thats smoother than I expected and not really harsh. In the dry down you get a woody base with a little musky cleanest to it. Longevity on my skin last a long time as well as the performance. ( my friend said it was strong an hour after I sprayed) FBW?? Tech yes but with the designer price tag it’s debatable.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how differently fragrance works in real life versus how it’s often discussed online. Some scents make a strong first impression, but don’t go the distance. It’s rough when scents make that amazing first impression and then die on the vine for lack of longevity. I know I’ve doused myself before or reapplied to the point of ridiculousness hoping somehow that would extend the wear, only to feel embarrassed later for clearly overdoing it. I've also stained fabrics that way. I remember reading about a perfumer named Jean-Claude Ellena who spoke about preferring transparency, lightness, and clarity in perfumery rather than density or brute force performance. In that philosophy, some of the most beautiful materials are also the most fleeting by nature. Maybe that’s part of the tension with fragrance; what feels most captivating in the opening isn’t always what’s built to last through the day. I only know my strongest urges toward scents are often the ones most fleeting and it is frustrating, so I just keep chasing.

Pronounced "See-ah-j", is the French/technical term for the trail created by a scent when it is worn on the skin. It comes from the French for "wake" and can best be described as how a fragrance diffuses "in a person's wake," or behind the wearer as they move. A fragrance need not be a heavy one to have a large sillage. Sillage is not the same as projection (how a fragrance is perceived by others around the wearer). Instead, it is enhanced by motion and ambient temperature as well as the inherent qualities of the skin (as well as, to refer to my last post, if it contains Davana flower, or other similar "chameleon" ingredients). It (the skin chemistry) becomes a substrate to the scent. For the aforementioned "ambient temperature", this is why some scents, such as the Rayhaan Lion eau de parfum I previously posted, would be considered "too intense" for summer/hot weather. Whereas, the Armani Stronger With You line, for example, is better in cold weather; claimed by many to have a sillage over a kilometer. The video attached to this features a perfume student rating different men's colognes, and also mentions "sillage", among other terms. Also, her reaction to Armani SWYA from 4:58 to 5:30 is priceless ;-)