Thunder French Avenue 2025

I really like Dior Homme Intense (2011) a lot. A noble fragrance, whose bottle is slowly but surely running empty for me. This release came just at the right time!

First impression: the bottle looks strange, but the matte color feels quite high-quality. I quickly warmed up to it; however, I do wonder how Arabic houses come up with these wild ideas.

I spray it for the first time and think, certainly inspired by suggestive texts: this is it! But wait a minute, it tickles my nose. Pepper. But quite a bit. The well-known iris note is cleverly woven into this spicy context and gives Thunder an exciting character. It thumps nicely, and you can smell this peppery sweet iris - I like it! And that's why the first association might not be so right after all...

Then it starts to settle down after about half an hour. It becomes creamy, strongly vanilla, almost even cinnamon-like in some places, although this note is not listed. The iris blends with noble gourmand vanilla; I'm talking about wonderful, fine, not overly sweet desserts. No Lattafa synthetics, finely balanced and therefore certainly exciting even for those who are skeptical about vanilla. I love that.

Then the downside: it is weak on the skin. After three hours, it says goodbye, and even the clothes become more neutral. I sprayed it at least 15 times. My partner - usually very sensitive - confirms: hardly noticeable. Damn, that hurts. I liked it so much, this fleeting journey through the iris world. However, I don’t want to rule out that this might change. Maybe it just needs to sit a bit. I would add that here accordingly.

So it really does thunder - it’s the pepper that’s meant. Exciting creation, good idea, quite close to its inspirations, but still an independent contribution to the powdery iris craze!