I tried a bargain dupe of my favourite Tom Ford perfume — it’s £125 cheaper than the real thing and I take it everywhere

HAVING a signature fragrance is a blessing and a curse.

Of course, it’s great being known among your friends for smelling great, and having a specific scent that people associate with you.

After all, scent is closely linked to memory; it only takes a passing whiff of a perfume to be reminded of a person you’ve not spoken to in years.

However, it’s less ideal when you run out of your favourite perfume and have to fork out for a new bottle.

It’s even more irritating when that perfume is Tom Ford’s Ombre Leather, which costs £108 for just 50ml (although it’s currently on sale at Look Fantastic for £86.40).

If you want the big-boy 100ml bottle, you’ll need to part with anywhere up to around £150, depending on what deals you can get.

However, in good news for people with champagne taste but beer money, there’s a new wave of brands sweeping the perfume world.

Their purpose is to make cheaper versions of well-known fragrances, giving shoppers access to hundreds of scents that might have previously been out of reach.

I’ve been tasked with doing an Essence Vault review, and have compared its Tom Ford Ombre Leather dupe to the real thing.

Pros

• Over 80% cheaper than the real thing
• A serviceable (if not perfect) dupe of the original
• Lasts longer than the real thing
• Comes in 5ml, 30ml and 100ml versions
• 30-day moneyback guarantee
• Vegan friendly

Cons

• Smell isn’t quite as refined, especially on the skin
• Ethically iffy
• Probably lacks some of the more high-end ingredients of the real thing

Quick summary

Many of the adverts I see for perfume dupe brands like The Essence Vault centre on testimonials saying something like “I couldn’t tell the difference!”.

In my experience — and the experience of other people on the Sun Shopping team who have tried these products — that isn’t true: almost everyone I’ve asked to do a blind sniff test has been able to tell the original Tom Ford from the Essence Vault’s version of it.

The original just smells more complex, more considered and, to be blunt, more expensive.

However, that’s not exactly surprising. The Tom Ford is more expensive; a lot more expensive.

If you compare the only size offered by both Tom Ford and The Essence Vault — 100ml — you’re looking at a £125 price gap.

That’s an awful lot to justify, especially because there’s no getting away from the fact that the Essence Vault’s version is a very serviceable impression of the scent.

While it’s not a perfect replica, you’re still getting the same sultry leather notes, and its shortcomings only become evident when you compare it side-by-side with the real thing.

I certainly wouldn’t use it as a permanent replacement for my bottle of Ombre Leather, but it’s an amazing way of extending its lifespan; when I’m just heading out to the office I’ll use the dupe, and if I’m doing something a little more special, I use the real thing.

Rating: 4/5

First impressions

If, for you, perfume is as much about decorating your bedside table as it is about smelling good, I’d stop reading here and purchase the real thing.

My bottle of Tom Ford comes in a sleek, weighty, black bottle; it feels expensive, substantial and faintly dangerous.

The Essence Vault’s packaging, meanwhile, is a bit more… utilitarian.

All of its fragrances come in the same white cardboard box, and someone has scrawled the product number (in this case 470) on the top in blue biro.

Inside the box is a similarly workaday glass bottle with a white label, again featuring the product number (I presume referring to Ombre Leather on the packaging would break some sort of trademark law).

However, we’re not here to talk about the packaging; it’s the smell that counts.

Performance

Upon spraying both bottles, it’s immediately possible to tell which is the real thing. The Tom Ford just smells better.

It’s more complex, and you get much more of that beautiful leather; it really is like inhaling a new, buttery leather jacket.

After a few minutes though, it mellows out, and becomes a lot more clean, while remaining distinctly manly and sexy.

The Essence Vault’s version does the opposite; upon the first spray, you do get that leathery quality, but it lacks a bit of the presence and gravitas of the real thing.

In its place, you get more fruity, floral notes coming through. (I may be talking absolute guff here, but I’m sticking with my convictions).

However, after a few minutes, it settles into a much more smoky scent. In fact, one person who got a whiff of me said it smelt almost unpleasantly smoky.

Having said that, I had sprayed a lot (for research purposes, of course).

All in all, though, I was pleasantly surprised; The Essence Vault’s impression is nowhere near as offensive as I’d worried it might be.

Realistically, if you’re buying Ombre Leather, you’re after a smoky, sexy masculine scent that delivers on the eponymous leather note while remaining light and clean.

While the Essence Vault doesn’t deliver that with the same poise or grace, all those notes are there.

It’s a bit like the famous Morecambe and Wise sketch: “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”.

Are the ingredients the same?

When starting this review I had the noble idea to research the entire ingredient lists of both perfumes to catch any differences between the two.

However, after a couple of hours of Googling and a frustrating interaction with ChatGPT, I haven’t managed to find too many differences.

This is mostly because the ingredients that make Tom Ford’s formulation higher-quality aren’t featured in the ingredients list.

All of the natural oils and extracts the brand uses are grouped under the umbrella term “fragrance/parfum”, an industry trick designed (at least in part) to prevent companies like The Essence Vault from nicking the exact formulation.

The one thing I will note is that The Essence Vault expressly says that its perfumes are vegan.

This is something Tom Ford has historically avoided doing, although the man himself has been vegan since 2017; that’s not to say that they’re not vegan (I have no idea), but it does hint that the Essence Vault’s perfumes don’t include all of the same ingredients that you get in traditional high-end scents.

Is The Essence Vault legit?

This is a question that pops up a lot online, and it really depends what you mean by “legit”.

The Essence Vault is very much a legitimate company; it’s registered on companies house, and I can testify that it’s not a scam or sketchy scheme.

The company has over 10,000 reviews on its website, and 92% are five-star; I can also testify that I received my products quickly and without any issues.

However, of course, there is an ethical dubiousness about brands like The Essence Vault.

While it goes to great pains to explain (in capital letters) that its products “DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TRY TO CLONE” the brands that they’re inspired by, they are perfume dupes, and you could make a valid argument that they’re profiting off the creativity of the companies they’re inspired by.

However, there’s another very reasonable argument, which is that brands like this allow people to enjoy scents that would previously have been beyond their means.

The verdict

It doesn’t quite live up to the “I can’t tell the difference!” adverts that you might see on social media, but our testing found that differences between the Essence Vault’s dupes and the real thing are only stark if you compare them side by side.

The best way to use them is in tandem with the real thing; it allows you to use your coveted expensive version sparingly while using the dupe for day-to-day use.

So, if a bit begrudgingly, there’s certainly a place for The Essence Vault on my bedroom cabinet, even if I do have to hide the bottle behind my fancier-looking perfumes.