Absolutely Dark Intense by Zara

I just got it and it seems somewhat similar to Phantom Parfum, yesterday I actually tested one on one wrist and the other on the other wrist and yes it’s quite similar in the dry down

A really strange fragrance created by Guillaume Flavigny, which can be good or bad depending on the point of view you look at it from. For a novice nose this will smell very weird and clearly won’t be liked. In contrast, if you’re already into the niche world and looking for something different from everything on the market, you’ll find this fragrance very interesting. The proposal of this fragrance is to take the Percival base that Absolutely Dark has and add a denser base to it, turning it into its nighttime counterpart or one meant for colder days.

Justice must be done to this scent, created by a well-known nose, a perfume that has flown completely under the radar, unknown or underrated. To start with, this is not Dior Sauvage Elixir and, as some have hastily said, my nose doesn’t detect the licorice they mention either. Only the intense lavender, cardamom, maple syrup could be what gives that hasty, mistaken first impression and makes it get compared to the Dior. This good perfume, through complexity, depth and roundness in the scent, could even be a more mainstream start, an entry point into the world of heavier, more niche scents offered by Amouage, keeping the respective quality differences in mind, I mean how elaborate the Omani house’s scents are compared to how well-crafted this Absolutely Dark Intense is (Zara Magnificent Black was another wonderful, very well-executed perfume, like this one). Here, as correctly categorized as a “fougere gourmand”, there is an undeclared common thread that gives the olfactory image of an ‘incense’, semi-smoky semi-resinous, which gives the scent a pseudo-oriental vibe, while still being a totally pleasant, Western perfume. Evolving perfume, not linear or static at all, drying down toward that sweet syrup note, a sweetness that is well balanced to my taste, which shows from the heart notes onward (the notes listed on the bottle are more than these, Fragrantica folks, please provide the exact information) with even an orris and walnut note, semi-hidden and emerging as it dries down. Longevity, very good, long-lasting, even with a huge projecting sillage, which makes it a scent for few sprays, it doesn’t need many, even as this juice ages its performance gets more solid, I’ve noticed it, no issues in that regard. A masculine unisex, for what I’d say are transitional climates, spring, fall, daytime, it can even stretch into winter, although for very cold weather you have even warmer scents. In summer, it would feel like a very dense perfume. Zara as said has two souls, some very average scents, fair performance, and other very good scents for their price and among those, some with performance almost reaching beast mode (Zara 02 WOOD STREET is one of them, I have it in my collection). So it’s up to you to discover this Absolutely Dark Intense, which has nothing to do in scent and performance with its weak older brother, a very average perfume that supposedly imitates a PDM… if you still have it in your nearby store, smell it and you can even take home this intense version, I didn’t know it, I had no expectations and it was the best I found for scent and price, at that time. Always smell for yourself and let yourself be surprised (or disappointed). Cheers! * The perfume has 12 aromatic notes in its pyramid and was created by Guillaume Flavigny.

What they’ve done here is really bad, normal Absolutely Dark is a spectacular everyday masculine perfume. Here they’ve changed it a lot with a pretty weird mix, they wanted to make it gourmand but at the start it smells like soy sauce. Inexplicable how bad it turned out