I don't know when it happened, but sometime in the last three years, Parfums Parour reformulated Lomani Pour Homme, and significantly changed its packaging. I reviewed this fragrance many years ago on basenotes and Badger & Blade, and pointed out that its "fresh" dihydromyrcenol and slightly fruity top notes were more a progenitor to Cool Water than anything else, but here on this blog I aligned my opinion more with its being on the Drakkar Noir axis.
At this point, in late 2018, the Year of the Barbershop, I found myself wondering if Lomani PH was worth revisiting. Again, to recap prior opinions, I found its structure classically fougere, but also remarkably cheap in both concept and execution. It smelled like the perfumer put dihydromyrcenol through an olfactory amplifier, and had dialed its synthetic facets to eleven in the top and early drydown stages, but then ran out of money. To close out the show, Parfums Parour settled on a very lonely tree moss note in the base, which made Lomani smell like a handful of stale wood chips after ninety minutes of wear.
I think this reformulation is a good opportunity for me to point out the key differences between oak moss and tree moss. Some fragrances benefit more from tree moss than oak moss, and some are the opposite. Two examples are Z-14 and Lomani Pour Homme. Z-14 belongs in the former camp; Lomani belongs in the latter.
Tree moss is dry, and aids in streamlining woody accords. It works beautifully in Z-14, among dry woods and woody citrus. Oak moss is much more diffusive, and amplifies any "fresh" chemical in its vicinity. It works like iso E Super, as a fixative and texturizing agent. Good fougeres marry aromatics to coumarin, and benefit from oak moss. Tree moss flattens aromatics and coumarin, leaving a one-dimensional drydown (Lomani circa 2010), but oak moss activates the aromatic connectivity between top and base, allowing crisp herbal notes to powder into a pleasantly clean shaving foam effect.
Thus the reformulation of Lomani PH is a more successful fougere than its earlier iteration from several years back, and for one reason alone: they replaced the tree moss with oak moss. No longer does Lomani PH dry to a hollow tree moss note of no distinction. It now dries down to a powdery, talc-like, vaguely herbal shaving foam effect. Lomani PH is arguably the cheapest fougere you can buy, now yours for literally $6.98 if you can catch Fragrancenet's 30% discount offer. That's actually cheaper than Pinaud Clubman.
That means you can be utterly broke, and still possess a modern aromatic barbershop fougere in Lomani PH, which I also still consider an unheralded entry in the Drakkar Noir axis of barbershop ferns. Will you smell sophisticated? No, you will smell like you shaved, and applied some mixture of aftershave and witch hazel.
Lomani PH is a celebration of synthetic barbershop chemicals. They even colored it the same as Barbacide. P-Parour isn't going for broke here. They're just putting out the most basic Reagan era fougere imaginable on a shoestring budget. The hilarious thing is that they tout its "new look" on the box with a red imprint (something no classy brand does), and yet the box and bottle are almost identical to their former selves. The box is still drab grey with 1980s font; the bottle is still clear glass with an elliptical cap. Except now it has a silver plastic atomizer, and silver shoulders separating cap from bottle. Great. It looks better than it did, but not by much.
I often read about how Lomani is such a great clone of Drakkar Noir. I'm not sure it's "great." Drakkar's use of dihydromyrcenol is clever, taking its freshness and using it to amplify pine, wood, leather, and lavender. Lomani has a hint of apple-like fruitiness, a hint of soapy lavender, a very vague hint of pine. Yet nothing materializes into an accord. Instead it smells like dihydromyrcenol is an ingredient in a shave soap from a dollar store. It smells good for the money, and you got a superb deal.
What more needs to be said?