Brands, especially perfume brands, tend to do funny things. They release the same fragrance with different names in different regions. They take one specific base accord and build a dozen fragrances on it. Sometimes they market something as unisex when its packaging suggests it's anything but. And sometimes, as in the case of Hawas Malibu, they merely turn the namesake fragrance into a sleeker, improved version of its best self. Which begs the question: why not just release the improvement first?
Take Burger King, for example. A few months back, they released the "new and improved" Whopper, their signature hamburger. I only eat fast food a few times a year, so it's not like I could tell you exactly what a Whopper has always been like, but from fairly recent memory I'd say it was a large traditional hamburger with a surprising amount of fresh veggies that would get smooshed because Burger King only ever wrapped it in paper. I recall eating a Whopper once, thinking to myself: this burger is perfection, deflated. Then I tried the improved Whopper, and wow, what a difference! Not smooshed, fluffy bun, chock full of veggies, literally picture-perfect, identical to the image on Burger King's website. It tasted like a homemade grilled burger and was shockingly good.
My only thought was: why didn't they do this to begin with? Imagine the fast-food dominance Burger King could've achieved in years past if they'd been giving people a burger of this quality from day one. Well, when it comes to Rasasi and their Hawas line, my thought is similar. Now, I should point out: Hawas is the only fragrance in my collection that garnered a gushing compliment from a young woman on its first outing. See my review of Hawas for the details, but the short version is: she could smell me across a grocery store and spent five minutes trying to find me to ask what I was wearing. This speaks to the quality of Hawas and what it does. It's lethally effective at turning heads, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure why, because to me, it's just another freshie.
Hawas Malibu, released a full ten years after the original, is an improvement on Hawas, at least in my opinion. Where the original hits you squarely in the schnoz with salinated orange blossom, fizzy citrus, sweet plum, cinnamon, and handfuls of sea salt (to the point where you feel like you got seawater up your nose), Malibu tones down that DNA and focuses on Isoraldeine 70, a methyl ionone with a plummy-sweet orris powder. This makes the fragrance feel quite floral, but in a sueded, dry, slightly creamy way. It's also much classier than the original; Hawas 2015 was always targeted at the designer-obsessed Invictus Aqua types, but Malibu uses designer clonedom as a facade, tricking legions of YouTube reviewers into touting its resemblance to Gaultier's Le Beau Le Parfum, while actually smelling like an incredible iris fragrance.
Where it converges the most with the original Hawas is in its saltiness. This stuff is very, very salty. The initial lick of salted cocktail glass and pineapple-adjacent fruitiness rapidly segues into a brief orange & wintergreen-forward bubblegum vibe that has me fearing the worst. Fifteen minutes later, the fruitiness fades away and the minty quality tangos with the salt, letting the salt lead. They dance into an abstract iris, with orris dryness and floral sweetness peeking through the buckets and buckets of salt, and for its nine-hour lifespan on skin, Malibu smells like a super contemporary and minimalist aquatic floral, with very subtle facets of lavender, patchouli fraction, and Cashmeran for that musky smoothness in the base. I wouldn't say Malibu is particularly tropical, but it's definitely got seawater vibes. Interesting stuff.
Rasasi has released a hundred different Hawas flankers at this point, and it bears mentioning that they're overdoing it, to say the least. We don't need a new Hawas every other month. But apparently the brand is committed to this range, as they keep coming. Malibu is more wearable than the original Hawas for me, so I'm happy to take this one out for a spin on a workday, or on the weekends kicking it with my partner. I wouldn't say either Hawas is a masterpiece of any kind, but I would readily admit that they're both very nice fragrances that stand head and shoulders above most of the designers the YouTubers claim they're cloning. Malibu is unique: an old-school fem iris for Gen Z.