Shahana Classique Black Onyx

When I tell people about my hobby, there is a question that keeps coming up: why do you want to pay so much for some scents when you can buy cheap scents that resemble expensive ones? My answer is always that I have experienced that training your senses and being able to sense more nuances in an object makes you able to appreciate complexity in it. If it is there.
I do appreciate the concept of making good things and then selling them at a reasonable price. Therefore I like fragrances that do not cost a lot but smell just as good as the very expensive designer scents. Black Onyx is well represented in my local drugstore and I have tried several of them. Among them a green apple shaped bottle with a perfume supposed to resemble DKNYs Be Delicious but unfortunately it smelled totally awful. Shahana is a tiny bit better, since it is not presented in a hideous bottle - but in my opinion the overall problem with some of these very cheap perfumes is the lack of layering and quality. I am hereby NOT saying that price equals quality since there are also expensive perfumes that do not have the expected quality and therefore are too pricy.
Shahana starts out flowery, mostly jasmine. It then moves to the heart, which is flowery, mostly jasmine. In the base it is mostly jasmine… So the layering is nonexistent. The scent does not take me on a journey. It does not challenge my nose to find out what is going on. In the end I am anosmic and just want to smell something. But the worst thing about the fragrance is that, to me, it is slightly synthetic. Just so much that I keep noticing while wearing.
I suppose a lot of people buy Black Onyx’s scent and wear them with a smile. My only interest int this brand is to look at the bottles and boxes and try to guess what designer fragrance they try to copy. That is good fun, by the way…
138/365