A Near Death Experience with Dior Vanilla Diorama

Perfumes that simply don’t work or turn on your skin are well known as being “scrubbers” in the perfume community. It’s fairly common to hear people saying things like “Flower Bomb was a real scrubber for me!” It happens sometimes, doesn’t it? Especially if you blind buy a fragrance online!

For me, my last perfume scrubber was Dior Vanilla Diorama. I waited so patiently for the release of this scent in the US because I was convinced it was going to be some luscious vanilla. It launched in 2021 but Dior’s website didn’t get it for several months and finally around October or November it was available and it was an insta-buy for me. I really was going to wait as we had plans to go to Paris this Spring (now I’m being all anxious about the new variant) and I had visions of sniffing it and purchasing it while I was there. But I was impatient and grabbed it from Dior’s website. Thankfully someone was watching out for me that day though because instead of indulging in a 4.25 oz $260 bottle I conservatively purchased a 1.5 oz $110 bottle. And believe me, it was sort of hard going with that smaller bottle because I was convinced I was making a huge mistake by going small. As a massive Feve Delicieuse fan girl I was convinced that Vanilla Diorama was going to be just as delightful, just as exotic, just as delicious…

I mean, this is a fragrance that was paying homage to the Diorama Gourmand (apparently it was Christian’s fav dessert and exclusively his own created by Maxim’s). Surely that would mean it was an incredible gourmand right?

Not so much.

This literally made me sick. No, but seriously, it did. When I got my box I ripped it open with my teeth and out tumbled my treasure. A gorgeous heavy cylinder glass bottle containing a golden-hued juice. At first, I didn’t even want to open it. I just wanted to stroke it and tell it how special it was to me. After the initial excitement wore down I decided I’d use it on a special night and not before that. But after a few hours of it sitting happily on my vanity, I decided I had to spray it on. And I did. A tiny little squirt.

And I fell deathly ill.

It literally made me vomit-y. I had the worst headache from it. I had to lie down for an hour. I remember I kept trying to scrub it off (it was literally a scrubber) with a wet soapy washcloth but the scent lingered on. I stripped out of my clothes and laid down. I was too weak to get to the shower. It was seriously the weirdest experience of my life with perfume. I mean, I’ve had headaches from scents before but nothing like this.

To this day I can’t open the bottle without getting a migraine. It really isn’t the warm, vanilla experience I had hoped for. To me, it smells like really weird incense vanilla almost like an Airwick or Glade vanilla. It’s supposed to have notes of Madagascar Vanilla with accents of rum and patchouli with hints of cocoa and orange and a touch of amber but to me, it’s full-on incense-y vanilla.

I’ve kept the bottle around in the hopes that I could mix it with another vanilla or even grow to love it but thus far anytime I open the bottle I can feel my head start to pound. It’ll probably be gifted to a friend or my mom who might enjoy it but this is one scent that’s a scrubber for me.

How about you?

What are your recent perfume scrubbers?

Anything that’s given you a huge headache or made you feel a bit weird after smelling it?