Wanted Eau de Parfum
Azzaro (2023)

Wanted Eau de Parfum by Azzaro (2023) is a bit of a late-coming entry, when there is already a more-intense variants on the market, and it seems more like an afterthought built on the same sort of pillowy-nutty ethyl maltol cashmeran saffron picklewood do-see-do base as many things these days, a real sweet mess is this, and not very interesting. There really is no relation to the original Azzaro Wanted (2016) either, aside from the bottle, and overall Wanted Eau de Parfum smells like it could be an unused mod for Varvatos XX by John Varvatos (2020).

Mostly, this crosses the streams between Phantom by Paco Rabanne (2021) and Scandal by Jean-Paul Gaultier (2021), which had both come out two years before and I guess caught Azzaro with its pants down market-wise. So of course, imitation and recombination is the sincerest form of flattery (and attempts at market stealing), with the only original bone in this scent's body being a trace amount of juniper throughout. The rest opens and closes with sweetness, the woods and musks, the cloying gourmand tones, and a bit of vetiver in the deep dry down. Performance is at least good, annoyingly good.

The kind of person who wears this has no real sense of taste anyway, right? That target buyer just wants loud, and extroverted at all costs. Maybe the lemon and ginger tea-infused take on the Bleu de Chanel (2010) DNA found in the original Azzaro Wanted wasn't boisterous enough, although I personally think it is at least a unique take on the particular style of its era, one that trend-obsessed Gen Z buyers may think has already passed, even though 2016 isn't that far behind in the rear-view mirror from 2023, when this released. Anyways, this isn't awful, but it isn't good either. Neutral