Having worn and lived with my samples of Oud Liaisons and Patchouli d’Atlas, two of the four additions to the Ormonde Jayne Four Corners of the Earth collection (called ‘Four Corners of the Earth Reimagined‘), for about a week now, I can say two things.
First, these perfumes are a significant departure – stylistically and compositionally – from the original collection. Whereas the original collection employs a rather Western, or French, approach to mostly Eastern tropes (oud, tobacco, osmanthus), complete with a semi-classical structure and plenty of space and air between the molecules, this collection smells more narrowly Arabian in both idea and execution.
Number two, these two perfumes demonstrate that it is possible to build the Giga-Chad of Gulf style perfumery without drowning them in the obnoxiously chemical heat signatures of most examples of this style. In other words, you will smell potently and diffusively like the Crown Prince of the UAE, phone-flipping swagger included, but in an ultra-posh, refined manner. These do not exist in the same universe, let alone shelf, as any of the Lataffas.
Oud Liaisons is a thoroughly weird perfume. It smells pungently of real oud oil right off the bat, with almost none of the other supposed topnotes (rose, lemon, pink pepper) showing up, except for an odd licorice note that smells more like a medicated boiled candy than the anisic gumminess of licorice rolls. Though the opening is compacted and a bit overwhelming, in the air, it manages to create a scent trail of something softly rounded and suede-ish. Up close and on the skin, though, it takes time to cycle through some less attractive phases that smell a little like ureic acid or dried honey soaking through the sawdust floor of an indoor riding ring. It is horsey and acid in equal part.
Close your eyes, though, and it no longer smells of pee and woodchip, but of those expensively peaty Scottish whiskeys, like Laphroaig. The whole perfume, in fact, is subject to the power of suggestion. Once the cacophony of notes loosen a little, it begins to smell of clay, of horse blankets, and of old wood. Later, a hint of candied rose petal emerges, and, unless I am hallucinating, even something one might think of as marshmallow fluff. In the very late drydown, though, this candied accord evaporates entirely, revealing a latexy myrrh. Inexplicably, though composed of individually ugly and brutalising notes, Oud Liaisons manages to smell regal. This is a successful expression of the idea of oud, rather than a faithful (and inevitably poor) copy of the raw material itself.
Patchouli d’Atlas is possibly the strongest (and most masculine-presenting) perfume I have ever smelled that didn’t also raze my nose to the ground with brutish woody ambers. Make no mistake, the woody amber are there in ample quantities, and it is by no means a comfortable wear for me, but this perfume appears – at least on the face of it – to derive its immense power not from its Ambroxinated underpinnings but from the combined forcefulness of the other notes, which in and of themselves all possess strong personalities.
Among these non-shrinking violets, we have a rubbery saffraleine material that smells like Tom Ford’s Ombre Leather magnified to the nth power, tons of that woody-pap space filler that is cashmeran, finely milled cedar, and the nose-moisture-wicking qualities of Akigalawood, a bone-dry particle that extricates itself from the earthen, cocoa-dark mass of patchouli to become an airbone expression of leather. The drydown is a sour, rich tobacco-like accord, with hints of Black Gemstone (SHL 777). Tom Ford would totally release this as Cuir Marrocain if he managed to get his hands on this formula.
The best way I can describe this perfume is to say that it is like Ganymede (by Marc-Antoine Barrois) if it moved out of the Parisian suburbs to Riyadh and started speaking fluent Arabic, or like Oud for Greatness (by Initio) if someone was willing to pay for a much better formula. It is an iron fist inside a velvet glove. Though I would rather push razors under my nails rather than wear something like this potent, I admire the Giga-Chad-ness of it all. Someone just distilled GCC braggadocio into a scent without looking over their shoulder at the fake Middle Easternness of most of this genre.
Source of Sample: Ormonde Jayne PR kindly sent samples.
Cover Image: Photo by Llana on Unsplash
