SOTD: Superz Budapest Khamzat Smesh · Brotherhood Of Scent

21d (edited) • SOTD 🍊

SOTD: Superz Budapest Khamzat Smesh

So I gave in to the online hype around the Superz house and, since I'm unfortunately not going to be in Budapest anytime soon, I found a decant supplier with Khamzat Smesh in stock. It arrived yesterday and I've been testing it yesterday and today. TLDR: it's really nice, but I'm not going to be looking to pick up a bottle.

After wearing it a bit yesterday and finding it to be potentially weak in projection, today I blasted myself with it -- 4 sprays to each arm, 3 to the neck (granted, these are little baby decant sprays). It has a nice open that's a bit edgy -- I get some lavender, some bitter orange, some warm spices, and something... a bit funky. It might be the edge of the neroli (which my nose hates) coupled with some of the spices or moss, but to me it was a little off-putting, skunky funky. But then thankfully, a few minutes later it's gone and I'm left with an absolutely beautiful warm spicy scent. Spicy like Christmas, not spicy like chili. It's got a hint of sweetness, maybe from tonka, cinnamon and other sweet spices (kind of like a church incense sweetness). It's an overall lovely warm spicy scent through the mids and into the drydown which is ambery, spicy woody. I don't get a lot of vanilla, and there's not a lot of tang or any kind of edge from the moss and vetiver notes that Fragrantica lists -- it's just a nice warm spicy feel all the way from start to finish.

That said... on my skin the performance was pretty abysmal. I got an hour of good projection (it was constantly in my nose off my arms and neck the whole time), then for the hour after that I was getting little wafts of it from time to time, but 3-4 hours in and I had to lean into my arms to keep getting it. After 5-6 hours total it was just this sort of gentle warm spicy skin scent for another few hours.. So unless the decant site watered this down... it's not going onto my full bottle list. Given the funky open and poor performance on my skin, I think so many other frags do the warm lightly sweet spicy thing a lot better. That said... this is a very nicely balanced and well crafted scent - I just wish performance and longevity were better.

It was nice enough though that I've just ordered decants of some other popular ones from this house (Morocco and Memories Gold) to see how they are!

So my official rating: Meh. Good enough to work through some from time to time and trade away the rest, certainly not bad enough to end up as a car freshener or in the box in my closet.

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