Description
“Hong Kong. 1989. A wild ride in a red taxi takes you to the Po San Club. It’s 3am, it’s raining, and every one is smoking. The music inside the club pounds your head and you glance around in the dark… she’s over there. Touching up her lipstick, she sees you and flicks her hand at you and smiles. You blush… the spotlight catches her sequins as she strolls across the stage towards you.
‘Hey Baby, thought you wouldn’t make it in time to see my show’.
You grin… ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world’.
Wan Chai… the hottest night of your life. Smoke accord, Taif Rose, Saffron, Anis seed, Cinnamon, Cardamon, Amber and Oud.” – a note from the brand.
Wan Chai was launched in 2017. The nose behind this fragrance is Teone Reinthal.
simka1983 – :
mmmmm-hmmmm. this is divine exoticism. deep, dark, sweet temptation. a most beautiful incense compounded of taif rose, spices and oud, burning in a small, warm, wood-panelled room, lit only by candlelight. later, cinnamon, (which i normally don’t like in perfume, but here is a definite exception) makes a more visible appearance with a deep cardamom note, slightly bitter and herbal, subsumed in smoky abyss. an intoxicating, heady, dense liqueur, drunk on sumptuous floral oriental brocade, swirling coils of incense and powdered spices, flashes of burgundy lacquer. a nightcap for the darkest nights. surrender.
chirik88 – :
Wan Chai is, for me, a special place and a time: a very wet afternoon in Chinatown in Bangkok, wandering the streets in sensory overload. Tendrils of white incense smoke drew me into a temple. A worshipper. A priest. Buddha. And two red chairs on which were a wooden fan and two laughing theatrical masks. Transfixed for eternal minutes before the street again beckoned. Sought shelter from the rain inside the entrance of dimly lit restaurant in which lovers were dining and engaged in conversation. Back out into the street and now soaked to the bone and shivering in spite of the heat, serendipity would have it that I should discover a magical sunken little Chinese tea room. Cozy and ever so serene, there I sipped white rose tea from a gold rimmed cup and meditated on floating miniature rose buds as the rain slapped the glass doors in front of me. The outside world was a watery blur. Wan Chai is like that afternoon. It morphs over time, taking you from one place to linger to the next to the next. The journey starts with an intoxicating spicy smokiness and eventually settles you into a den of meditative coziness. Absolutely beautiful perfume. My current favourite.
kazak007 – :
I tried a sample of this fragrance recently and found the opening to be very heavy and overwhelmingly smokey. Thankfully the smoke drifted away after about 5 minutes and a rich floral emerged. Rose and vanilla and labdanum with spices. It definitely goes through many changes as it develops from a very intense start to a romantic rose amber fragrance although the smokiness remains in the background which makes Wan Chai suitable for men and women. My father lived in Wan Chai and he says he doesn’t remember it smelling like this.
Sillage is moderate and longevity very good.
den040481 – :
A smoky Asian hot house, long slender pipes and wispy tobacco haze rising from them, dark haired ladies, scantily clad in exotic, brightly coloured brocades serving spicy pieces of themselves behind hand painted fans and decorative dividers. Low lit lanterns hang from the aged wood rafters in this shanty of spices and Asian affairs, you can almost breath in the cardamon and saffron with a whiff of exotic, ashy white smoke, reminiscent of hidden, secretive opium dens. Aniseed lurks in the shadowy corners of the room, delicious dark sweeteners like the dark haired ladies that invite you to join them there, sharing their tangible, fleshy secrets with you. Sweetly spiced roses adorn their hair, and a dark woody oud, rich in its textured age imparts a heavy, boozy, hypnotic accord. The whole place reeks of furtive secrets, shadowy delights of the flesh and forbidden hypnotics of the mind, the spices only make the verboten temptation even more alluring. Wan Chai is an exotic adult affair, a place of wanton taboo.