Al Wisam Day

I've been wearing this all summer and along side Terre De Hermes Eau Tres Fraiche, Mugler Cologne, and Prada Infusion D'Homme it has earned a place as being among my favorite Summer fragrances. Many say this is like Creeds Silver Mountain Water but I must disagree. This is better than Creeds SMW. I'd actually say it is a far more superior option than SMW. First off Creed's offering smells very salty. This is not a bad thing outright but when you do a side by side with AL WISAM, AL WISAM smells so much more bright and fresh in comparison,from the opening through the dry down. Many of Creed's defenders will tout the quality of ingredients they use. I can honestly say that AL WISAM DAY is far from a cheap smelling fragrance. Quite the contrary...It smells very Niche and it's mind blowing that it can be purchased for under $40. Secondly the performance is not even a contest. AL WISAM is a BEAST. I can smell it on myself 12 hours later and on clothes much longer. SMW turns in to a skin scent while AL WISAM DAY is just starting to reveal its mid notes...that may be an exaggeration but not really...lol...AL WISAM projects, has major sillage and generally performs like a powerful winter fragrance during summer months. Its a scent you could wear in the day all year round because of that fact. SMW is weak, strictly a warm weather scent which at over $300 means a lot of wasted money during use. To me the choice is clear. Some will never appreciate a scent like AL WISAM or refuse to even try it because they consider it a clone. Nevermind the fact that Creed as well as other Niche and Designer brands have copied other scents many times and will continue to. Just because Rasasi is a Middle Eastern Brand people create a different standard for them. Quite honestly they are shaming Western houses by their High Quality juices at such low price points. The frag community should simply embrace great scents and care less about who is making them and judging by the growing buzz Middle Eastern houses like Rasasi, Armaf, Afnan and Lataffa are earning, this seems inevitable. 9/10 YouTube Channel- Simply Put Scents

A really pleasant, masculine, classy, and mature fragrance. It is fresh, clean, soft, light, and bright. This feels transluscent, crystalline, and fluorescent. I consider this as the perfect scent when wearing white clothes in a hot summer day. It is unique enough that it will stand out from the crowd. It has mass-appealing aspects and is inoffensive when sprayed moderately. Longevity is 7+ hours on my skin. Loud projection for the first 3-5 hours; surprisingly, people 6 feet away from can smell me. I love it. This is the 4th fragrance I've smelled with the "SMW scent DNA" and I want to do a brief comparison between them. The performance of Al Wisam Day is way better than both Silver Mountain Water and Mefisto, but Club de Nuit Sillage is the strongest, sharpest, most potent and most abrasive among the four I've mentioned, Sillage is nuclear and has a prominent metallic and inky feel to it (imagine a razorblade dipped in radioactive ink, that is what I imagine Sillage is like) and thus can be unwearable in indoor settings such as the office and school and lasts too long on skin (it lasts 10+ hours on my skin, often lasting until nighttime). Meanwhile, Silver Mountain Water becomes an intimate skin scent in 30 minutes, Mefisto lasts 4-6 hours with average projection. In my opinion, Al Wisam Day is the most perfectly balanced among these four fragrances – it is not too loud and not too weak, and lasts the right amount of time that by nighttime it fades away and I could spray on another perfume better suited for the night. Al Wisam Day, in my opinion, is the best among these 4 fragrances.

This is my 2nd Rasasi fragrance. The first was La Yuqawam. I think this house gets kind of categorized with Armaf's and some of the other arabic houses that market fragrances with striking similarities to niche Western frags. First, I've stopped referring to these as clones because they are simply made for a different market. It's not fair to assume "clone". We are just getting access to products marketed towards the east, and we have no idea if the Western houses weren't copying them. Now, the eastern houses I've come across do vary some in packaging and quality. I'd put Rasasi at the top of packaging, and quality. They are crem de la crem. They surpass even the highest designer's here. The box this thing comes in is like a tailor made present to a prince or something. La Yuqawam came in a velvet wooden box. Talk about attention to detail. The fragrances are Dior, or Guerlain quality. Rasasi quality is significantly high. These fragrances are exquisite. My Al Haramain L'aventure is in this category by Al haramain, but I'm not sure all of their frags are as high quality as Rasasi. Then, Armaf frags are a bit more simply packaged, cheaper. However, Armaf fragrances are about in the average western designer category. This Rasasi though is not average designer comparable though. I put Guerlain and Dior, maybe Chanel in an upper tier of Western fragrance houses, and Rasasi fragrances sit with them. Great stuff guys. This company doesn't deserve to be referred to as a "clone" company. They just might have been the one's getting copied. Let's get real guys and gals.

A delightful gem from the Arab undergrowth (rising like a baobab, quite rightly so)... It's been hanging around in my collection for a while now, but today, out of the blue, I felt the urge to say something about it. In fact, it's my first review of 2024, and dedicating it to a lovely creation feels obligatory! A truly unique fragrance. The opening never fully convinces me: it drifts off into a chilly and slightly discordant direction, with lavender and geranium having a real throwdown for the first ten/fifteen minutes, only to surrender to a fabulous rose, the true Queen of the concoction. It emerges fresh and luminous but strangely creamy and milky, and it's not alone: sage with its woodland green touch and sandalwood further brightening up this radiant heart that pulses for quite some time. The fragrance slowly mellows out, picking up softer and more caressing nuances along the way from musk, amber (more ambroxan style, if anything), a modern and icy oakmoss. The oud doesn't make an appearance, and I swear, I don't miss it one bit here because the composition is all about fresh, clean, airy, and aromatic tones and - needless to say - totally unisex. A really good scent. The fougere component is very noticeable and pleasantly balanced by the flowers, amber, and musks that warm it up, giving structure and body, ensuring that Al Wisam isn't too fleeting but at the same time, doesn't fall into the classic category of overpowering Oriental fragrances. Good, really good, versatile, radiant, suitable for everyone and for all year round. Delightful.

I'm here to explain the very different reviews of this fragrance... apparently there was some sort of reformulation, because I have two authentic bottles of this that smell completely different! (2017 and 2020) The 2017 bottle is absolutely a rose scent. The rose is the same one you'll find in Tom Ford Noir de Noir, and in spite of the metallic notes, it does NOT smell like Silver Mountain Water to me. Honestly, I think Charriol Royal White (another metallic rose scent that is NOT a SMW clone) smells closer to SMW than this bottle. The 2020 bottle, however, is probably tied with Armaf's Derby Club House Blanche for being one of the best SMW clones I've found! It's less floral than Derby Club House Blanche, however it is SO strong! If I only want to wear this for a few hours, I can use just ONE spray! But 3-4 sprays? Then it'll last until the next morning. I thought it was a fluke, but I just keep being impressed by its longevity and projection. A light, bright, sharp, and very accurate SMW scent, with the power to cut through the smell of a steak dinner. Truly phenomenal. So, apparently people were inaccurately comparing this to SMW originally, and Rasasi just decided to go with it and flex their cloning muscle to actually clone SMW?! Either way, the end result, these newer bottles of this fragrance, are phenomenal. Not so much of a fan of the older 2017 bottle, personally. I like the 2020 bottle so much, I purchased a backup bottle just in case it changes again or suffers any batch variation.