The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
X Vanilla emerged from the second collaboration between Bibbi and the Dutch retailer Skins, released in 2024. The brief was deceptively simple: take vanilla somewhere unexpected. Not louder, not sweeter, different. The challenge was finding what makes vanilla interesting beyond its warmth, what keeps it from dissolving into just another comfortable blanket. The answer arrived in the form of Paraguayan galbanum, a green note with a sharpness that refuses to let the sweetness settle.
The composition builds from the top down, letting the cassis and plum establish a tartness that prepares the ground for vanilla to enter without simply sweetness. Galbanum is rarely paired with vanilla, the green note tends to resist sweetness rather than soften it. Here, jasmine sambac acts as the bridge, its creamy floral quality smoothing the transition and giving the galbanum something to soften against. The result is a vanilla that doesn't arrive cleanly, it's wrapped in green at first, almost herbal, and only settles into warmth after the jasmine has had its moment.
The evolution
The opening announces itself in blackcurrant, bright, almost acidic, the lemon cutting clean through. Plum arrives last in the top trio, its jammy quality softening what could have been too sharp. This phase lasts twenty minutes, maybe thirty. Then the jasmine sambac begins to assert itself, and with it the vanilla, though the galbanum keeps everything grounded. It's not linear. The vanilla doesn't simply arrive and stay, it fights with the green for the first hour, neither winning, both holding territory. Around the second hour, something shifts. The galbanum recedes slightly, the vanilla and jasmine finding their rhythm together. This heart phase is long, three, four hours of sweet-and-green without resolution. The base arrives quietly: sandalwood smoothing the patchouli, the vanilla now fully warm but still carrying that green memory. The drydown is less green but more complex, a quiet complexity that lingers on skin for hours, particularly near pulse points.
Cultural impact
X Vanilla sits in an interesting position: vanilla as familiar territory, but approached with the kind of restraint and complexity that marks it as something other than mass-market. The galbanum addition is the kind of move that either appeals immediately or requires a few wears to appreciate, and the fragrance rewards that patience. It's the kind of scent people discover through conversation rather than advertising, the recommendation that follows the question 'what are you wearing.'
