Esscentiell

... was my motto regarding Kayali for a long time, especially with the overpopular Vanilla 28. Spoiler, new motto should be: Give the hype a chance, it may be worth it.

But first, back to the beginning.

Vanilla 28, vanilla 28, vanilla 28 everywhere... i get it, you FANillas. You have to try it if you like vanilla (which I do). But that alone, this complete oversaturation, ruined it for me for a long time and I deliberately avoided the perfume. Until, years later, I thought to myself: "well, I'll give it a try, just to be able to say I've tried it". So I took part in a sharing and poof, I had Vanille 28 under my nose.

My first impression: meh. Somehow not as classically vanilla as I had imagined. Or vanilla at all. More like full-on sugar twitches. Scratchy brown sugar and something almost, yes, fruity. Slightly cherry, perhaps from the tonka bean. Not bad, but underwhelming (is that a word? It should be) for all the praise for this scent. Ultimate vanilla? Well. I didn't want to have high expectations, but I was still secretly disappointed.

At least I felt vindicated in my 'don't believe the hype' philosophy. With my nose right at the top, I could say 'I knew it'.

Think again. It didn't stay that way. Every now and then I took my sample out to test it. To confirm my opinion. To be able to say with a
misplaced satisfaction to be able to say that I live up to the hype again. It didn't stop at now and then. More and more often I felt the need to break out this fragrance. Probably well over 28 times. Before I knew it, my sample was as good as empty.

Slowly but surely, Vanilla 28 had me wrapped around its finger. Or through my nose. The scratchy sugar ironically scratched a spot in my sense of smell that no other fragrance could reach. This sweetness that was broken by this dry scratchiness. This vanilla, which I didn't really classify as vanilla at first, simply wouldn't let go of me. I had to get a bottle, I wanted more.

Well matured, it arrived from its previous owner and finally made the fragrance palatable to me. If a spoonful of sugar sweetens bitter medicine... and all that.

A brief, interestingly alcoholic note makes way for the well-known main character: sugar. This is joined by an increasingly softer, rounder vanilla with an absolute gourmet addiction factor. In the drydown, I get vanilla biscuit dough sprinkled with brown sugar. Simple, delicious, simply delicious. Still not the absolute ultimate vanilla that everyone must have, but does it even exist?

Vanilla 28, I can humbly admit it now: I'm glad I finally gave you a real chance. You just work for me, to my own surprise. I BELIEVE THE HYPE.

Ohweiherauch - Incense City was a risky blind buy on my part. Was it worth it?

Incense is a fragrance that I am only just beginning to discover and learn to love. So absolutely a new resident of Incense City.

So I was afraid I had completely overestimated myself here. After all, this is supposed to be the absolute incense bomb that you get here - at least according to the reviews. Pure incense, so to speak, with which you can keep all kinds of demons, vampires and other creatures at bay. Useful for sure if your name is Buffy, but do I want to smell like that? Am I up to these clouds of incense as a newbie? I wasn't sure.

So it was with appropriately sacred reverence that I sprayed the scent for the first time. Wow. Very different from what I expected, very different from what I feared.

My first association was not a cold church in Incense City, but a soft, sweet desert at night, far from the city. With warm dunes of ambrette cedarwood sand on which - there it is - gently cooling veils of incense lie. So yes, the incense is present, and for me it becomes more present as the fragrance progresses, but it never becomes overwhelming. The balance between cold incense and warm, resinous wood is really well done and offers enough contrast for me to want to keep sniffing it.

Wage the fragrance seems familiar to me, I would like to say it reminds me of Ambre Khandjar from Une Nuit Nomade without the plum (would explain the desert association), but I no longer have my sample for direct comparison.

Longevity is okay, I get around 5 hours. At the beginning, it radiates at least well at arm's length, then gets quieter relatively quickly. I think it's absolutely solid for the price.

Where there's incense, there's fire, right? And that's true of this fragrance, because I'm on fire. Especially now for the colder season, I can already say: this will be a perennial favorite for me. It was definitely a risky blind buy, but it was worth it for me.

I am now well prepared for any demon encounters and can say with fervor: Get away from me demon! But don't leave me, scent!"