Neutral Reviews of Vanille Fatale 
Tom Ford (2018)

Dense and rich, but the powdery aspect turns me off. It's not overly powdery, but the combination of barley, rum, and plum gives it a sickly sweet feel. Personally, I prefer Tobacco Vanille over this. However, its performance is great, so there's no need to worry about that. Overall, it's just too powdery for my taste.

Soooo similar to a softened Tobacco Vanille, as several have already pointed out!

I found Vanille Fatale to be flatter than I'd expected. No doubt, Tom Ford used very fancy ingredients to paint a composite picture of voluptuous vanilla: Saffron, cofee, rum, several exotic flowers, various resins, even mahohany wood!

These are commendable and create a sugary, smoky vanilla. But it's not that inspiring in the end.

If I had to choose only one very expensive vanilla scented Tom Ford fragrance...this, unfortunately, would not be the one.

That's not to say it's a bad fragrance: the smoky-boozy unisex vanilla scent isn't bad per se-I just find the notes linear. A straightforward musky vanilla that has above average longevity (6-7 hours) and a stronger sillage (just more than arm's length).

To me, there's nothing that screams $180 bottle here. A good scent and I wouldn't pass up a free bottle...but I'd save your money and just splurge on Tobacco Vanille, which I find to be a superior scent.

6.5/10

The coffee presents really strong to me in the opening but settles into a really pleasant warm vanilla. Still may be too much for me... but I'm intrigued, may try again.

On my skin, there isn't much of any evolution in Vanille Fatale. It's a soft, velvety, slightly floral and milky vanilla right from the beginning until the end, and there isn't any substantial woody, smoky or boozy aspects that manifests on my skin.

During the first 2 hours, I can indeed detect a cereal-like note hiding underneath the milky, slightly oily vanilla, which must be the barley note mentioned in the pyramid. Afterwards, it turns into an abstract, subtle woody/powdery texture in order to keep vanilla from turning excessively creamy. I quite enjoy this stage of Vanille Fatale, which reminds me of the soft vanilla sugar powder in Van Cleef & Arpels Orchidée Vanille. However, this delicately dry undertone keeps veering off its initial course and turning screechy in the late dry down. Granted, it's far from being as aggressive as in certain "smoky" fragrances,but this sharp insurgence is jarring next to the gentle, smooth vanilla.

Vanille Fatale is mostly a skin scent and lasts about 9 hours on my skin.

Despite the occasional screeches, Vanille Fatale is overall a pretty, velvety, slightly feminine vanilla that is quite enjoyable and is restrained on its sweetness. But at the same time, it's uncomplicated and over-reliant on the smoothness of vanilla that it evetually appears flat and uninspiring to me. I can not deny that it would make a versatile everyday vanilla fragrance, but at its current price, I would hesitate to recommend it considering that there's no shortage of more affordable vanilla fragrances either more interesting or as versatile as Vanille Fatale.