Zadig & Voltaire This Is Him

Rock energy, raw edges, and a surprisingly refined dry-down. That is the personality of Zadig & Voltaire This Is Him, an Eau de Toilette launched in 2016 by perfumers Nathalie Lorson and Aurélien Guichard. The bottle alone tells you everything: a skull, black and confrontational, yet the juice inside is warmer and more nuanced than the packaging suggests. Aromatica carries the Zadig & Voltaire This Is Him decant in Bangladesh in all available sizes, so you can try it properly and decide at your own pace.

Fragrance Notes

Top: Black Pepper, Grapefruit

Heart: Incense, Vanilla

Base: Sandalwood

Full note breakdown on Fragrantica.

The Scent

Grapefruit leads the charge, citrusy and direct, doing most of the talking in the first few minutes. Black pepper rides alongside it, adding a dry, slightly metallic snap that keeps things from going soft too quickly. It has an immediate freshness, but there is weight behind it, and you sense the darker notes gathering beneath the surface. The grapefruit does not linger as a sweet citrus; it reads almost tart, and the pepper keeps it honest, holding the brightness in check before the composition shifts direction entirely.

Within ten to fifteen minutes, the transition begins. Incense starts to surface, smoky and slightly resinous, pulling the fragrance away from its citrus start and toward something distinctly darker. This is the moment where This Is Him earns its edge. The incense accord is not cathedral-heavy; it is more like the residue of smoke on a leather jacket, urban and worn-in rather than ceremonial. The pepper lingers here too, weaving into the smoke and sharpening it, so the heart feels genuinely dry rather than sweet or soft. As the two notes interlock, the fragrance develops a textured, almost gritty quality that sits somewhere between a modern woody oriental and a traditional spiced incense.

Then vanilla arrives, and this is where impressions can diverge. It can read welcoming on some skin, a smooth counterweight that softens the pepper and smoke into something wearable and likeable, or it can feel as though the sweetness arrives a touch too quickly, nudging the fragrance toward the gourmand end of oriental territory. On most skin types, the balance holds well, and the combination of incense and vanilla together is genuinely compelling. The vanilla does not take over; rather, it fills the space between the smoke and the warmth without erasing either.

The dry-down settles into sandalwood, creamy and clean, wrapping the remaining incense and vanilla into a warm, coherent skin scent. The sandalwood here reads more milky than woody, which smooths out any remaining roughness from the pepper and smoke and gives the final stage a cozy, skin-close quality. By the final stage, This Is Him reads as a polished oriental masculine: the punk energy of the opening has softened into something far more wearable than the skull bottle implies. The contrast between the aggressive branding and the surprisingly accessible, even crowd-friendly dry-down is a genuine part of its appeal.

When to Wear

This Is Him works best on autumn and winter evenings, where the incense and warm sandalwood base come into their own in cool air. It suits casual night outings, bar evenings, or low-key social occasions where you want to make an impression without going full-formal. Browse the Dates | Nights collection at Aromatica for fragrances built for exactly these moments.

Who Is It For

Reach for this if you lean toward oriental and spicy masculines but prefer something lighter and more modern in weight, someone drawn to incense-driven scents who does not want the full heaviness of a traditional oud or resin fragrance.

If you enjoy A*Men by Mugler, which shares the same incense-and-sweet-darkness DNA, This Is Him sits in a similar territory but with a fresher, easier-wearing opening. Browse the full Zadig & Voltaire collection at Aromatica.

Available as an authentic decant in Bangladesh at Aromatica in 3ml, 5ml, 9ml, and 15ml.