Intense Black II For Men - 1488

I originally bought a tester of Tom Ford Noir Extreme Parfum, which this fragrance is inspired by. I really loved the scent, but the price made it hard to justify wearing it all the time. After seeing that Perfume Parlour had an inspired version, I decided to try their 30ml bottle instead. I bought the extrait black bottle version.

On my skin, it gives the same fruity opening with a woody, masculine dry-down. It projects really well, and honestly, the atomisers on Perfume Parlour bottles are some of the best I’ve used from brands that make inspired fragrances. Compared to The Essence Vault, Perfume Parlour are miles ahead of the competition.

The scent itself is great quality, and I’ve already had two compliments on the first day of wearing it, which I didn’t expect.

Perfume Parlour has been around for a long time, so I feel you can trust that most of their fragrances are going to be solid — whether you’re buying an alternative or just testing something before committing to the original.

Overall, I’m really happy with my purchase and will definitely keep using Perfume Parlour when I’m looking for new fragrances.

The only downside I can say is that the opening / just after spraying had a harsh alcohol smell, but that has completely subsided after a minute or so. I am sure with some maceration, the opening will be a lot gentler.

Never smelled the original and this was a blind buy. I spayed it on the inside of my elbow and kept getting whiffs of beautiful vanilla wirh some leather notes. This stuff lasted on my skin up until the next day. Was very pleasantly surprised and this time I'll be buying a bigger bottle - cuz why not?

I tried this side by side with Noir Extreme EDP, NOT the parfum.

When I put them both on the original was definitely sweeter and smoother, the dupe was more scratchy and watery. My wife just smelt the same thing on both hands and they certainly had a very strong resemblance.

The big difference was in the far dry-down, when I got home from work the dupe felt like it was just about gone but the original had a deep-sweet-comforting scent still lingering on my hand, which I really liked.

So, although they were different I feel the scents, in the air, would be very similar making the dupe great value for a similar experience. That said I would 100% get the original if this scent was a love more than a like, just for that deep-warm dry-down.

I will order Intense Black For Men - 1260 next time and re-test.

Scent - 5 / 5

Performance - 4 / 5

I wanted to base my reviews on more than just an unmeasured opinion, so I have used this method to rate all of my purchases at week 1 (under 7 days after delivery) and after week 4 (generally mentioned ‘maceration’ time). I always spray 2x each side in the clavicle, 1x behind each ear and the back of my neck, never on clothes.

With a total score of 10 equally split between smell and performance.

Smell: 0-5
This is obviously just my own taste

Performance: 0-5
Checked at 1, 2, 3, 5 & 9 hrs)

I can certainly say that, without exception, every scent has improved in performance between weeks 1 & 4 and by week 12 many have developed further with tobacco and other warm notes becoming much richer.

I hope this is helpful
DK

Check out Mags Frags review which he calls a 10/10