Spectre Wraith Eau de Parfum (French Avenue)

A shot . . . of Espresso

Luca Turin once bluntly said, "Coffee fragrances don't work." This was after a year or two of waxing poetic about several fairly expensive coffee fragrances. It left me wondering if he'd been overly enthusiastic about the advent of coffee perfumes, only to realize with some chagrin that most of them smelled outré, chemical, unwearable. Thierry Mugler's A*Men was the world's first and only mainstream coffee frag, a mid-nineties attempt at saturnine gourmand accords that today reads as a bit harsh and crude, but back then was exotic and undeniably artistic. Its saving grace was an intentionally chemical interlude between its minty-bright opening accord and mocha-bean patchouli base, which manifested as a "tar" note of indescribably macabre weirdness. 

French Avenue, which is really just the label name for a company called Fragrance World Perfumes, operates out of the United Arab Emirates and has a small niche line of "clone" fragrances under the Spectre moniker. These include Spectre and Spectre Ghost (both 2023). While Spectre gets some cult love for its rendition of Matière Première's Falcon Leather, and Spectre Ghost gets oodles of heart emoji for being a damned close chromo of Ani, Nishane's brown study in wet oils, Spectre Wraith (2024) straddles the midline in popularity, garnering faithful adherents on one side, and dismissive regrets on the other. Ostensibly a copy of By Kilian's Black Phantom, Wraith aims to be a sultry coffee-based gourmand. I will say that its bottling presentation is one of the most creative I've ever seen. Wraith's matte black bottle, "shot" by a bullet that retained its casing, is striking. 

The fragrance matches. Wraith opens with a semisweet cherry cordial accord, rather like one of those pricy dark chocolates with the even darker fruit filling, and in those first five minutes, Wraith smells quite mesmerizing. It's like Wayne Szalinski shrunk me down to the size of an ant, took a bite from just such a choco-cherry confection, and dropped a glob of it on my head. It surrounds me in a rich haze of mellow sweetness, and I have to admit, it's pretty amazing. If it stopped there, I'd say it's merely a unique but linear crowdpleaser, but it doesn't stop there. The whole things morphs into an esoteric niche frag of black coffee with buttercream, and smells like a smoother and more refined version of A*Men's tar. This is something that will appeal to a relatively small subset of fragrance aficionados, and it should—it's abstruse but beautifully made, and perfect for cold autumn and winter evenings. This coffee fragrance does work.