I admit that Phantom Parfum is an improvement over the original Phantom, which is to say the most apt example of ‘polishing a turd’ in existence. Overall this is still just an awfully bad scent, but they’ve made it not quite so awful as the previous iteration. It’s definitely still all about that sickly sweet synthetic vanilla with the barbaric harsh chemical nature of fake lavender. However, there’s a smoothness of cardamom which helps round everything out a bit better. By god it’s still horrifically screechy and messy, but at least there’s some improvement - that’s the best you can hope for from Paco Rabanne. I simply don’t understand why Phantom even exists, who actually enjoys this? It honestly feels like a child slapped this together without even trying.