Tonka 25 (2018)
by Le Labo

This is a lovely spicy & sweet fragrance. It is perfect for winter nights and is just so warm and cozy.

It reminds me of l'occitane’s eau de cade but less dry and with the obvious addition of tonka bean and a well-balanced musk.

So, maybe it is not worth the extra $200 but if you can afford it Tonka 25 is a great scent.

Le Labo Tonka 25 is probably the first release I can remember (since fragrances became a hobby) being quite excited for, certainly of the main collection, if not the City Exclusives as well. Tonka is a fun note and is central in some fragrances that I love--particularly, deeply rich and sweet gourmand fragrances--so naturally, I was curious to see what Le Labo did with it.

Tonka 25 does not seem like it'd be an opulent gourmand, though, from the note breakdown list, and the actual scent confirms this prediction. In addition to the eponymous note of tonka, sweet and subtly nutty, there are strong contributions from cedar and musk, rendering the blend, fittingly, woody and musky. The musk is definitely of the "sweet white musk" variety, not animalic, and the cedar makes a fitting partner for a smooth, easy dry down, an easy partnership of sorts.

In the dry down, it's darker, as well, the musk fading with the tonka actually becoming heavier and more enveloping, rendering the fragrance even more comforting as a whole.

As with most higher-end brands, Le Labo's increasing pricing makes, with each year, for more challenging decisions of the value and merits of its fragrances. The saving grace is that the main collection (contra the city exclusives) is sometimes discounted by store-wide coupons (at, for example, Saks Fifth Avenue), so there's some relief. The retail pricing of Tonka 25 is $270 for 100ml, $184 for 50ml. Le Labo at least retains the unique quality, among higher-end brands, of incentivizing the purchase of smaller bottles by offering to refill them at lower costs than the juice + bottle original price (exactly how much lower, I'm not sure) in lieu of buying wholly new bottles as replacements. Still, all of Le Labo's offerings now fall roughly into the category of needing to love them in order to buy them.

Tonka 25 is an easy one for me to love, despite it not pushing boundaries in terms of scent profile (it's agreeable, unisex, versatile) or performance (it's good, more than just satisfactory, but not outstanding), but this is a clear winner from the house as its scent goes, as far as I'm concerned, and I'll give serious thought to acquiring a bottle.

8 out of 10