Teenie Toffees (Round 2)
scent of the day: Forbidden Flower, by Areej
Forbidden Flower reads as a deliberately sour, bitter, and strangely elegant construction whose skunk note functions less as provocation and more as architecture. The skunk acts as a bridge between a sour top and a sour base, carrying the trajectory from bitter grapefruit peel down into lime. I like to think of the skunky-bitter IPA of fragrances rather than an animalic stunt we might have goitten from Prin. The grapefruit here is distinctly peely and bitter, and the lime arrives with a Salvador Dalí-like sourness, even though present (at least accordsing to the notes) none of the lavender responsible for the sourness there. While the skunk is an extreme fixative in Forbidden Flower, it is not loud at all. It is light, restrained, and yet incredibly tenacious. It anchors the composition without ever shouting. Importantly, despite the presence of skunk, this fragrance is less animalic than one might expect, using bitterness and sourness as tension rather than fur or sweat.
In contrast to classic barbershop masculines, this composition is also noticeably less soapy. Where Salvador Dalí fragrances carry that clean-dirt tension associated with 1980s powerhouses (think Kouros), Forbidden Flower avoids overt cleanliness and masculinity, even though both share a powdery character. Salvador Dalí may be better crafted in a technical old-school sense, but Forbidden Flower has a strange advantage: it feels new while simultaneously possessing an antique aura that somehow reads as old if not older than my vintage Dalí. It is also perhaps less projecting than Dalí. Indeed, it has a lightness that could disappoint some wearers used to other Areej releases. Yet that very lightness is enhanced by subtle animalic touches that add buoyancy, lift, and zing. Within this airy structure, there are even vanilla-mint nuances that quietly shimmer rather than assert themselves.
What ultimately elevates Forbidden Flower beyond simple comparison is how its musk and patchouli interact, creating the uncanny sensation of smelling an ancient bottle of Guerlain pulled from a forgotten drawer. Its vibe is literally Heritage or Habit Rouge. This vintage illusion is deepened by the presence of exotic spices like turmeric and coriander and exotic florals such as jasmine and raat ki rani. Raat ki rani, also known as the Queen of the Night, is a Southeast Asian shrub often mislabeled as a night-blooming jasmine. It is not a true jasmine at all. Its scent is far more intense, and it is widely considered the most potent floral bush in the world. The plant blooms only at night, relying on moths as pollinators, appearing during the day like green unburned matchsticks before opening after dark—a botanical rhythm that mirrors the fragrance’s own slow unfurling on skin.
While the skunk in Rahassani may be more viscerally appealing and the lime in Isfarkand Elixir more exhilarating, Forbidden Flower occupies a unique emotional and conceptual space. It feels like a reconstructed naturescape, evoking a world that existed before the cold abstract urbanization suggested by Isfarkand Elixir. Rather than presenting nature as crisp or mineral, it suggests soil, bitterness, nocturnal florals, and aged perfume oils—all these filtered through a modern artisanal lens. In that sense, Forbidden Flower is not simply a challenging niche fragrance, but a meditation on sourness, antiquity, and botanical intensity, using skunk not as an animalic weapon but as a quiet, connective tissue that holds past and present together.
In the drydown what is cool is that you do smell more of a characteristic skunk (almost that marijuana smell). But in my case it is not when I nosedive into the spot on my arm but when I sniff my mustache after many times of nose diving. Its like that phenomenon where you smell vulva on your mustache the whole day, hours—sometimes a whole day—after you went truffle hunting.
Teenie Toffees
The Girl Scout, mind made for middle-school hustles bigger than badges, found huge
in her front cam that supreme cookie—a glossy box that scaled harder than scripture,
more generative than loaves or fish in the hands of Jesus—right between those thighs.
