Dark Vanilla Urban Scents 2018

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7.5 / 10 133 Ratings

Dark Vanilla is a popular perfume by Urban Scents for women and men and was released in 2018. The scent is sweet-spicy. It is still in production.
Pronunciation

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Main accords

Sweet

Spicy

Creamy

Resinous

Gourmand

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Camphor tree

Rum

Pink pepper

Heart Notes

Vanillin

Benzoin

Heliotropin

Base Notes

Bourbon vanilla absolute

Tonka bean

Vanilla CO2

Rooibos

Perfumer

Marie Urban Le Febvre

Ratings

Scent

7.5133 Ratings

Longevity

7.4121 Ratings

Sillage

7.0122 Ratings

Bottle

7.2102 Ratings

Value for money

5.933 Ratings

Submitted by BruceLee, last update on 19.04.2024.

Reviews

7 in-depth fragrance descriptions

09/17/2018

8
Bottle 7
Sillage 8
Longevity 9
Scent

Parma
27 Reviews

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Parma

Top Review 30

Picked up in the dark

Actually, I don't like vanilla in fragrances, especially if it is the main ingredient. She's usually too sweet or too soft for me. There are exceptions such as Helmut Lang's "Eau de Cologne", where it is used very discreetly.
But this fragrance is an exception, although it is a pure vanilla fragrance. That's because he lives up to his name.

scent:

It starts with a beautiful, natural bourbon vanilla note, which already has this intense, full vanilla aroma, which will distinguish this fragrance. However, it is not exuberant, but restrained by a spicy, ethereal and slightly alcoholic tone, which cannot be perceived in its radiance. It gives the fragrance earth connection and depth.

This is quickly joined by an impression that is amazingly reminiscent of Roiboos vanilla tea. An incredibly smooth, silky nuance. At this point the fragrance has reached a deep, full-bodied and almost velvety aroma and in my opinion the climax. From then on it runs very linear, gets a bit sweeter, and keeps this earthy, deep vanillity, as I attribute it to an untreated (bourbon) vanilla pod, until the end. You feel at home in this fragrance from the very beginning. It is not exuberant and so wonderfully balanced that I am always happy to wear it in cool weather. And that's supposed to mean something as vanilla-critical perfume!

stability and silage:

I can perceive the scent on my skin very well for about 4 hours. After that, the effect gradually diminishes, but I can still feel it slightly for a very long time. After 12 hours of movement (2 sprayers on the neck) it is still easily visible. The Sillage travels for several hours in a well moderate manner. From the 4th - 5th hour the radiation becomes slowly very close.

Application:

In my eyes it is an ideal autumn and winter scent, because it conveys a lot of warmth. It is equally suitable for both special and everyday occasions, as it is neither too modern nor too classic or elegant. He has a very special, unagitated, timeless character. Very pleasant.

conclusion:

This vanilla scent convinced me that there are earthy, deep vanilla scents that don't get too sweet, but don't have to hide their character either. With this new release, the Berlin niche brand Urban Scents - to which I have already referred in more detail in my commentary on Gunpowder Cologne - has once again succeeded in creating a very high-quality, very natural-looking and basically, despite its long shelf life, pleasantly restrained fragrance

10/17/2018

9
Bottle 8
Sillage 8
Longevity 8.5
Scent

FvSpee
249 Reviews

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FvSpee

Top Review 29

Cold vanilla

Urban Scents has added a new fragrance to its basic series. That's to be welcomed. Even if one might appreciate the cautious issuing policy in this fragrance house, the portfolio is still very manageable even now. And a perfumer would not be one if she only wanted to spend her time selling the existing range and designing scented candles and special-occasion room scents for opening new hotels. A composer wants to see a really nice new symphony performed by himself in public every now and then.

Dark Vanilla actually fills a gap in the house's offer, where the light, cheerful fragrances are somewhat overweight. He joins the more powerful, fuller works like Sensual Blend and Singular Oud, but is still something very special.

If we approach the scent by the indicated scents, we think we can detect an almost monomaniac vanilla obsession, even find ourselves in a vanilla orgy. In the base note we see bourbon vanilla in two different forms of preparation, next to it the tonka bean, which is called what because of its taste? Exactly. Mexican vanilla. In the heart note we find vanillin, no comment; and moreover heliotropin (alias Piperonal) and benzoin resin. The odour of the latter two substances is described in relevant online encyclopaedias as "vanilla- and almond-like" (heliotropin) and "balsamic and quite vanilla-like" (benzoin).

Despite all this "Dark Vanilla" is for me even less than for the two previous speakers a typical vanilla scent. Maybe I'm smell blind, but I'm not even 100% sure if I'll ever get to vanilla without help (the fence post is already swinging in the name). We combine warmth and sweetness with vanilla fragrances, and Dark Vanilla is only extremely sweet to a limited extent and for me, in all humility, not warm at all, but wet and cold like November. It's an autumn and winter scent anyway, but not one to cuddle on the open fireplace, but, Parma was absolutely right, a hard, dirty scent for Philip Marlowe, who, his hat on his face and his trench coat collar turned up on some corner at night freezing in the rain and observing a gangster (even if the scent may contain a certain comforting promise that better times will come again)
I am sure that not only the selection of the vanilla aromas (obviously dark, unsweet variants were used here), but above all the few, but already quite ingeniously used contrast notes are responsible for this completely different vanilla feeling. There is the rum in the early phase, which is rammed into your face like a fist right at the beginning. And when it has slowly disappeared, the benzoin with its revenge-purifying effect, which I almost feel as dominating in the middle and even still late phase of the fragrance (my nose is however also very sensitive to benzoin). I don't know what the camphor tree (also known as "Ho Wood") is all about, but it seems to be an original stuff.

I would like to dedicate an own paragraph to the Rooibos or Rooibos tea, of whose use the manufacturers are mighty proud, in the presentation sheet to the smell it says among other things: "With Dark Vanilla, a unique fragrance innovation has been created, as Rooibos has had no use in the classic fine perfumery until now". If that's true, then congratulations. I find that you can smell the Rooibos very precisely, and together with the vanilla it creates the creamy, creamy feeling that Ohdeberlin talks about: In tea mixtures like "Earl Grey Cream" or "Rooibos Cream" the "cream" is always evoked by the addition of vanillin or vanilla, because there is no "cream smell".

You can see from that: My black and white film Hardboiled-Gangster-Nasser-Asphalt-Interpretation above is of course only one of the possible ones, you can also read Dark Vanilla - like in a kaleidoscope - differently with your nose: Instead of Philip Marlowe also Mma Ramotswe, who drinks with Mma Makutsi comfortably a Rooibos tea with cream on the veranda, and instead of the rum, which the tattooed Narbige in the Kaschemme in itself tips, the vial with the rum aroma of Dr. Oetker, which my grandmother, God have it blissfully, has tipped into the tasty cheesecake dough mass.

Finally: The FIRST (!!!) from this house, which has a high Sillage (but hello) and durability. There were also three small sprayers on my face and neck and three more on my wrist (the sensitive little nose at my side to the horror), but with this dosage it lasts for nine hours now..

11/13/2020

Ttfortwo
40 Reviews

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Ttfortwo

Top Review 33

Tender to the point of self-sacrifice

Yeah, you can interpret rum/benzoe/vanilla like that. Of course you can. So delicate, so floating, cobweb-airy blown, so poppy petal taffeta pleated, one can.

But then what?
Dark Vanilla is so sublime that almost nothing remains of the rum/benzoin/vanilla idea. I considered that my nose is just too coarse for this daintiness, and for sure this is probably no less a part of the problem.

Another part is that I have had the (admittedly somewhat absurd) feeling with many Urban Scents fragrances that I experience the description of a fragrance and not the fragrance itself. Delicate, sensitive and detailed described, wonderful soft words pearl and fade away and in my head a blaszart watercolor is created, gently inked, finest color and fragrance nuances are added. Marie le Febvre tells me with her works of art how fragrances could smell. Just like a Japanese watercolour shows me what a bamboo garden could look like. Or like the melody of Sibelius' sad waltz, which might give a sound to the essence of mourning. As beautiful, moving, touching as all this may be: I am not sitting in a bamboo garden, I am not sad, and I only smell the idea of a fragrance.

This worked for me with some of the scents tested by Urban Scents, with Gunpowder Cologne, with Sensual Blend, with Desert Rose, i.e. with the more delicate, the more delicate plants. That even worked for Singular Oud to some extent.

But it doesn't work on Dark Vanilla, with notes like cannonballs: Rum, vanilla, heliotrope, benzoin. If they can only appear in the mirror, what's left? A whispered scream, the fanfare of Beethoven's fifth - hummed.

This one is also really well done: It's great how the thundering top note is lifted to the light, permeable, transparent and made to float by means of a tack of camphor, of all things.

But then I lose access to the scent. All I can really smell is a delicate vanilla little, just enough to evoke memories, memories of vanilla, memories of benzoin. Also of Rooibos, the idea of the woody-dusty scent of Rooibos arises in my head and I can also imagine very well how Rooibos could smell, will smell, MUST smell in the dark vanilla scent structure - but I don't smell it. It is complicated. And unsettling.

But one sentence on a possible evaluation. Dark Vanilla and me, we are so much strangers that I don't feel like a fair evaluation, also because I don't want to set a chicken eight. Sillage and projection are brilliant in the first minutes, but then they subside so quickly that a seven would still be flattering. Durability? The idea of the fragrance, the vanilla, which actually buries itself in my skin, in my clothes, over a longer period of time, an eight would be appropriate.

But I prefer not to

11/20/2018

7
Bottle 7
Sillage 7
Longevity 7.5
Scent

FabianO
63 Reviews

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FabianO

Top Review 16

"Winter is coming..." - benzo-saturated vanilla cuddliness

Yes, even though I put the Game-of-Thrones quote at the beginning, I suspect that "Dark Vanilla" must have been much too comfortable for the unshaven, blood-crusted fighter herd from the series. Soap was certainly the highest of all feelings and only on weekdays with -woch in the name. Also the strongly hypothermic Cercei Lannister will probably have taken something more angular...

This Urban Scents does not reinvent the wheel in terms of cosy and silky vanilla, the above mentioned ingredients have already been packed into various winter scents many times.

Lots of benzoin, a hint of rum, but in the end a superficially very smooth, delicate vanilla in its purest form, drifting slightly into femininity. Cuddly in times of emerging fogged up glasses, running noses and red frozen ears.

Relatively low development in its entirety, but quite well balanced, not too extreme in sweetness, rather balsamic-medium layer.

Durability and Sillage are fine. Pleasant to smell when winter is approaching...

11/14/2018

8
Bottle 8
Sillage 8
Longevity 8.5
Scent

pudelbonzo
689 Reviews

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pudelbonzo

Top Review 16

Voluminous vanilla

Today I got a package of Urban Scents with Dark Vanilla Pröbchen.

Well, that's once a service the school should be doing.

I am usually very fond of Urban Scents fragrances - and a vanilla fragrance made me especially happy.
This fragrance promises comforting homeliness, and also slows the jeeper down on sweets.
That's how you save calories without starving.

Normally I use creations from La Maison de la Vanille, but also the dark vanilla from Berlin does its job well.

Authentic is the pulp of the vanilla pod reproduced - creamy aromatic with slight sweetness.
The rum note to it is delicious, apart rounded off by soft pepper.
Roiboos adds a dark tone, with a hint of astringency.
But it remains appetizing with delicately marzipan tonka.

Dark Vanilla is not a direct gourmand, although it melts tasty in the nose.
Here the accompanying emotion is in the foreground, which I would like to describe with calm security.

The durability is excellent, because the midday spray will still accompany me as a bedtime sweet, and - hopefully - provide for sweet dreams

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