Lattafa — Mayar Cherry Intense
Essence
Mayar Cherry Intense is Lattafa’s 2024 entry into the viral cherry-gourmand wave - an inexpensive, TikTok-propelled “chocolate-covered cherry” fragrance that became one of the brand’s most-discussed holiday-season releases. The pitch is simple and effective: a jammy, syrupy cherry note wrapped in cocoa and a warm vanilla-amber-patchouli base, sold at a budget price. It is unapologetically a fun, sweet, youthful gourmand, not a sophisticated composition, and the wearer treats it exactly that way - a polarizing, high-performance crowd-pleaser whose detractors find it synthetic and whose fans find it addictive.
Scent Profile
The catalog notes track closely to lived wearer experience. The opening is the most contested phase: a bright strawberry-bergamot lift that many find “medicinal,” “a sparkling artificial cherry-flavored drink,” or even “the cheapest cherry vape.” This passes quickly (reviewers say a few minutes to ~30 minutes). The heart is the payoff - cherry jam, distinctly “jammy” and “thicker in texture than the juicy cherry we know from TF Lost Cherry,” with cocoa that ranges from “smooth dark chocolate” to “dry, powdery cocoa powder” depending on the wearer. The base is a creamy vanilla with amber, the patchouli mostly imperceptible (“not even noticeable, which is a good thing”). It is essentially linear after the opening burns off - a sweet, jammy cherry-chocolate skin scent. Signature accord: chocolate-covered cherry/Mon Cheri bonbon, with a strawberry-bubblegum edge.
Performance
This is the fragrance’s strongest selling point and a near-consensus in the wearer: it performs well above its price. Reviewers repeatedly call it a “beast,” report smelling it “on my clothes all day and even the next day,” and “I could still smell it when I woke up the next day.” A specialist review cites “7-8 hours on skin, longer on clothing” with “moderate” sillage that creates “a lovely scent bubble.” Projection is generally called strong-to-good. There is a dissenting minority who get the opposite (“no projection, no lasting power, purely a skin scent”; “not long lasting and very much watery”), confirming skin-chemistry variance - but the dominant signal is strong longevity and good projection. Cooler-weather behavior is implied by the heavy sweet-gourmand profile; multiple wearers call it a fall/winter scent.
Wearing Context
Practical reading from the documented profile plus wearer wear reports: this is a cool-weather, casual, fun fragrance - fall and winter favored, evening and social settings over formal or professional ones. summarized wearer pros and cons explicitly flag it as “not good for serious or formal occasions” and “great for intimate and social occasions.” It reads youthful and playful; despite the unisex billing, reception splits on gender skew - some find it “a little more feminine but mature,” one wearers pro/con list calls it “surprisingly masculine for a gourmand.” Best deployed where a sweet, noticeable, edible-smelling scent is welcome.
Comparisons & DNA
The single most-repeated comparison is YSL Black Opium Over Red (Yves Saint Laurent) - Mayar was widely marketed and discussed as “what Black Opium Over Red wishes it was,” and that framing drives much of its dupe-hunting traffic on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. The wearer verdict is split: some buyers feel let down (“No it’s not”; “smells nothing like Black Opium over red at all”), others endorse the resemblance. Tom Ford Lost Cherry (Tom Ford) is the prestige reference point reviewers measure the cherry against (Mayar’s is jammier, thicker, less juicy). Other wearer-named neighbors: Zara Cherry Smoothie (Zara) as a cheaper cherry adjacent, and one reviewer likening the sweet profile to Lolita Lempicka and Escada Show Me Love. Within Lattafa’s own catalog it sits beside Mayar (the original strawberry) as a flanker; reviewers note it layers well with Lattafa Khamrah.
Reception
This is a genuinely polarizing release. The praise camp is enthusiastic - “shot right up to my top 5,” “the best cherry strawberry perfume I smelled,” “chocolate covered cherries… sweet, chocolatey and strong.” The criticism camp is equally vocal: the opening is the main target (“medicinal,” “synthetic, plastic-y,” “cherry vape,” “cheap bathroom air freshener”), and several seasoned reviewers find it simple, flat or juvenile. A representative arc many describe: hate the opening, like the drydown (“I don’t like the initial smell however it does dry much better”). The specialist beauty blog Musings of a Muse is a notable skeptic (“sorry Lattafa, but I didn’t really like Mayar Cherry Intense”), countering the TikTok hype. Named critic coverage is absent. Blind-buy verdict: at this price, a low-stakes yes for cherry-gourmand fans who like sweet/synthetic fun - but anyone sensitive to a medicinal/synthetic cherry opening should sample first.
Versions & Reformulation
Mayar Cherry Intense is a flanker within Lattafa’s broader Mayar line (the original Mayar is a strawberry-forward scent). A body mist / “Mayar Cherry Intense Mist” version launched in 2025 (same note skeleton: strawberry/bergamot top, cherry jam/cacao heart, vanilla/patchouli/amber base) - a lower-concentration ancillary, not a reformulation of the EDP. Beyond the line siblings and the mist, there are no documented reformulations of the EDP itself. Several owners mention “macerating” or letting the bottle sit to improve the blend, but that’s wear practice, not an official version change.
Acquisition Notes
Firmly budget tier. Lattafa’s own retailer The Oud Store lists it at a regular price of $34.99, and intenseoud.com at $29.99 (reduced from $39.99); on grey-market discounters it drops much lower, with price aggregators showing FragranceNet listings from $7.79-$25.99, Jomashop $9.99-$24.99, and FragranceX $36.00-$39.99. Sold as a 100 ml (3.4 oz) EDP spray; a 3-piece gift set (EDP + travel spray + hair mist) and the separate body mist also exist. Decants and samples are widely available through sample services. As with all viral Lattafa, buy from reputable sellers - but note the brand is itself the affordable end of the market, so the counterfeiting incentive is lower than for the luxury houses it evokes; the bigger practical risk is simply mismatched expectations from the hype.
Notable Facts & Lore
- The defining fact is that this is a TikTok phenomenon - a “viral moment” scent, pushed heavily across TikTok, Instagram and Lemon8 as the affordable chocolate-cherry gourmand of the 2024 holiday season, riding the broader cherry-fragrance trend alongside Tom Ford Lost Cherry and the YSL Black Opium Over Red comparison.
- Lattafa, a Dubai-based house, is explicitly part of the Arabic-house wave that the wearer credits with delivering luxury-adjacent profiles at a fraction of designer prices.
- The perfumer is not publicly documented (catalog lists “unknown,” and no credible source names one).
- No controversy beyond the standard hype-versus-reality debate that follows every viral Lattafa release.