Treng Waves won Fragrantica's Editor's Choice Award for 2022, which caught my attention. Judging from Ibrahim Fuhaid's Instagram page, it seems he works with a diverse range of materials to create his fragrances, including a wide variety of natural tinctures and extractions. I'm not sure that he needs to, and I don't like this fragrance.
I want to like it. The pyramid for Treng Waves appeals to me, with notes of tea, peach, citron, lavender, ambergris, and leather. The top accord of citrus and peach is delightful, with a juicy and green aroma that evokes a bright Saturday morning. However, it's quickly followed by a musky designer leather scent that reminds me of Ombré Leather, blended with a hint of Kouros. I've smelled this sort of thing many times before in old-school designer frags from the eighties and nineties. This one is a little more transparent than most, and a strange haze of peach lingers in the background during the six hours that Treng Waves lasts. Longevity is relatively poor, as is projection. Meh.
This fragrance isn't prohibitively expensive, and I like its bottle. Fuhaid is relatively new to the scene, and I think he deserves praise for taking his time and not flooding the market with releases, like many upstart niche houses have in recent years. He has one other perfume, Vinoud, and I'm interested in wearing it. But Treng Waves is just a smidgen too cheap and derivative to spur me along. It doesn't help that Elie Tahari's EDP, with its lush bergamot, pear, violet, and tea accord, smells infinitely better at a quarter of the price.