Azzaro
Azzaro
8.5k votes
Best for
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The ginger arrives first, almost abrasive in its heat—a proper zing of red ginger that's more apothecary than spice rack. Within seconds, cardamom floods in with its green, camphoraceous bite, creating a brief moment where you think this might go aromatic before the toffee avalanche begins. It's sweet, searingly so, but the spices are fighting back with everything they have.
The bourbon vanilla takes command now, rich and boozy with that characteristic rum-like depth that separates it from the cleaner Madagascar variety. The toffee note becomes more buttery, almost praline-esque, whilst woody notes—indistinct but welcome—provide a skeletal structure to prevent total collapse. The spices haven't disappeared; they're threaded through like cardamom pods in rice pudding, occasionally surfacing to remind you this isn't entirely about sugar.
What remains is a skin-clinging veil of tonka and amber, resinous and warm, with the vanilla now soft and musky rather than edible. The sweetness persists but it's tired, comfortable, like the lingering scent of yesterday's baking. There's a faint tobacco-like quality from the amber-tonka combination, giving the final hours an almost oriental character that the opening never hinted at.
The Most Wanted Parfum is Azzaro's full-throated embrace of gourmand hedonism, stripped of any pretence toward sophistication. Fabrice Pellegrin has crafted what amounts to an olfactory seduction in the most literal sense—cardamom and ginger collide with such intensity that the spice nearly burns through the immediate wave of caramelised sugar. This isn't the refined sweetness of niche vanilla compositions; it's fairground toffee apples and bourbon-soaked desserts, unapologetically loud and designed to be noticed across a crowded room.
What makes this work—and it does work, for its intended purpose—is the way those incandescent spices prevent the composition from collapsing into syrupy sameness. The cardamom in particular brings a green, almost eucalyptus-like sharpness that cuts through the toffee and dual vanilla attack (Madagascar and bourbon, both wielded with abandon). The amber and tonka in the base add a resinous, tobacco-tinged warmth that gives the fragrance just enough gravitas to avoid complete confectionery disaster, though you're still firmly in dessert territory.
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