Hi there Posse! There was a lot of noise a few years ago about Vanille Tonka being discontinued. Maybe the outcry was so great that it never happened, or cynical me asks if it was a clever marketing ploy. Either way this 22 year old beauty is still available at LuckyScent and Surrender To Chance still has samples. I bought a bottle in the frenzy and it has been hiding in a box on top of my perfume cupboard where the perfume de Nicolai, Juliette Has A Gun, Keiko Mecheri and Montale live. While looking for my Montale Sandflowers (found and spritzed liberally) it was rediscovered and is now residing on my desk and getting some skin time.

Vanille Tonka by Parfums de Nicolai 1997

Patricia de Nicolaï

LuckyScent

Parfumo gives these featured accords:
Top: Basil, Mandarin, Lemon
Heart: Orange blossom, Jasmine, Carnation, Black pepper, Cinnamon
Base: Frankincense, Vanilla, Tonka bean

Here I have a fragrance that will be a perfect trans-seasonal beauty for you, and work well into winter or summer.

Unusually the opening citrus is given an exotic twist with green herbaceousness and the dry crackle of pepper. Within a minute of opening already a sweetly aromatic and resinous vanilla emerges. While it is still given added depth and interest by the green and sizzle Vanilla Tonka’s true nature now emerges. A skin type sweet fragrance that is not a skin scent, loads of fleshiness is brought through the white floral bouquet but never a hint of summer of lotions. It also remains resinous enough that the bakery analogy is pretty much off the table too.

A cool smokiness overlays everything in the deep heart of Vanille Tonka. Like walking into a dessert kitchen on Tuesday morning after Monday off. The memory of vanilla and the char of toffee sugar mixed with the cool, antiseptically clean stainless steel.

At no point does Vanille Tonka ever become very cosy, it’s not that kind of fragrance. Austere, spare and very elegant. I can so imagine this being a fabulous scent to give you a suit of armour, a non chypre backbone enhancer. Doubly effective because it takes tonic bean and vanilla, those sweet, cuddly, yummy and warm notes and makes it haughty and regal.

Perfectly unisex and so different.

How do you like you’re vanilla? Does vanilla Tonka sound like something you’d wear?

Portia xx

Portia also writes for Australian Perfume Junkies