The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Fantabulosa first appeared in 2004 under the name Ladyboy, born from B Never Too Busy to be Beautiful. When the scent was incorporated into the Lush range in 2010 and later re-released as Fantabulosa in 2019, it carried a name borrowed from Polari, the coded slang British gay men used before homosexuality was decriminalized in 1967. The word itself is a piece of hidden history, a playful invention from a community that built its own private language. The composition layers a banana note on top with oakmoss and seaweed beneath, sweetness carrying something more shadowed underneath, softness with a spine that keeps the fruit from ever feeling like a simple dessert.
The composition works because the notes argue with each other in the best way. Banana and chamomile on top read almost edible, like a confection, but labdanum and seaweed in the middle add a resinous, briny gravity. Then oakmoss and violet leaf close it out with that dark green earthiness that makes the whole thing feel less like a dessert and more like a walk through a damp garden after rain. The interplay between the sweet top and the mossy base is what gives the fragrance its strange appeal, each note pulling the others away from anything too obvious.
The evolution
The first hour belongs to the banana, and there's no point pretending otherwise. It opens ripe, almost candy-like, with chamomile threading a soft herbal calm through the sweetness. Then around the second hour the labdanum starts pulling weight, the fruit deepens from bright to bruised, and the seaweed arrives like a cold draft under a door. By hour four the banana is mostly memory, replaced by oakmoss and violet leaf doing their dark, green, slightly bitter duet. What's left on skin the next morning is pure moss, cool and mineral, like pressing your nose into damp bark. The fragrance has serious lasting power, and the trail stays intimate after the opening settles, drawing people closer rather than announcing your arrival from across a room.
Cultural impact
Fantabulosa wears its Polari name lightly, a piece of queer history tucked into a bottle that anyone can pick up and enjoy without knowing the reference. The banana note is what makes it impossible to ignore, a fruit that most perfumers either avoid or bury under vanilla and sweetness, and here it's left to speak for itself, threaded through chamomile and anchored by labdanum, seaweed, oakmoss, and violet leaf. The result splits opinion in the best way, with some people catching the mossy-fruity strangeness immediately and others needing a few wears before it clicks.
