Tahani (Amouage)
Type: mukhallat
Tahani is an exotic floral blend with a touch of fruity Cambodian oud anchoring it at the base. It opens with a very sweet, rich Taifi rose and the pleasantly bitter sting of artemisia. Nuances of apricot, rum, and leather nudge things along towards what will hopefully turn out to be an orgasmic riot of white flowers. (This is the kind of opening that portends good things to come).
Unfortunately, it loses the plot slightly in the heart, when the rich rose is joined by a soapy and far-from-brilliant white floral accord, which dulls the bloom on the other notes. The ambergris in the base does its best to fan some life back into the florals, its salty radiance for once more bitter and foresty than warm, which gives the scent a chypre-like mossiness that works against the bright, fruity rosiness of the opening. On balance, Tahani is fine but not worth the price of admission.
Tasnim (Tasneem) (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)
Type: mukhallat
Tasnim (otherwise known as Tasneem) in eau de parfum format is one of my favorite ylang compositions of all time. Its buttery, creamy banana custard is touched here and there by rubber, and given a gentle, steadying backbone of dusty woods and resins. It smells – for lack of a better word – dreamy. Like custard clouds whipped up by Botticelli angels. In the late drydown, there is a wonderful texturization akin to almonds or hazelnuts pounded down to a fine paste with cinnamon and clove. Although it ultimately winds up in the same vanilla-banana-lotion area as Micallef’s Ylang in Gold, it remains resinous and nutty rather than fruity. Think of it as a higher IQ version of the Micallef.
The attar (or more accurately, mukhallat) version of Tasnim is similar to the original eau de parfum, but because it stresses different facets of the ylang and for longer, it smells quite different for the first two to three hours. Specifically, the slightly pungent rubber and fuel-like tones of the ylang are brought out more clearly, complete with the melted plastics undertone inherent to pure ylang oil. The opening is not unpleasant, but it might be a little odd for people unused to the super potent (and not terribly floral) nuances of raw ylang. In terms of complexity, I prefer the opening of the eau de parfum because it is both softer and more traditionally ‘perfumey’, whereas the opening of the attar smells more like ylang essential oil.
The attar stays in this fruity banana-petrol custard track for much longer than the eau de parfum, affecting both the texture and the ‘feel’ of the scent. Namely, the eau de parfum possesses an innocent, fluffy softness that I visualize in pastel yellow, while the attar is a bright, oily concentrate – a Pop Art yellow smear of gouache.
The drydown is where the attar truly shows its mettle. In fact, the ever-evolving complexity of the drydown is a good example of where the attar format often trumps the alcohol-based format. In oil format, the naturals continue to unfold and retract in somewhat unpredictable ways, while the development of the alcohol-based format evolves to a point and then stops. So, while the eau de parfum displays a beautiful, nutty ‘feuilletine’ finish folded into gentle puffs of woodsmoke, the attar just gets spicier, lusher, and more bodaciously sensual.
Tasnim attar is also less sweet than the eau de parfum, a pattern I notice in all direct comparisons of the attar versus the eaux de parfum for this house. (This feature might make the attars more attractive to men). The attar eventually dries down into a rich, leathery ylang-resin affair, with the same dusty-creamy texture as the eau de parfum (think crème brulée with a handful of grit stirred through). It is more animalic than the eau de parfum, with a sort of stale, animal-ish costus note appearing in the latter hours.
Both the eau de parfum and the attar of Tasnim are beautiful. I have a slight preference overall for the eau de parfum, especially in its measured collapse from feathery custard clouds into richly nutty feuilletine. But in terms of longevity and richness, I must give it to the attar, which only gets deeper and lusher the longer it is on the skin, shedding its rather simplistic ylang oil topnotes to become a floral with an animal growl. The attar is as powerful, rubied, and pungent as a high grade ylang essential oil, while the eau de parfum is softer, milkier, and sweeter.
Tawaf (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)
Type: mukhallat
Tawaf greets you with a hallucinogenic swirl of gasoline, grape brandy, plastics, nail polish remover, and magic marker – not immensely floral, in other words, and a little shocking to those used to commercial (synthetic) jasmine. I admire its thrusting, near sexual pushiness, but it is not for those of a nervous disposition. Tawaf is not just jasmine, but a clever mixture of jasmine with its tropical partners in crime – ylang and tuberose. The flat inkiness of indole defines the opening, and although I find it more squeaky-chemical (magic marker-ish) than animalic per se, it might pin your ears back if you are a jasmine virgin.
Soon, a bitter vegetal note emerges to tamp down the purple roar a little. This is the greasy yellow-green of narcissus, with its feral undercurrent of soiled hay. In the attar format, the initial floral surge is underpinned by a pungent herbaceous note, like lavender or jatamansi, which to my nose smells disturbingly like spoiled milk. It is as intense a smell as lavender buds crushed between your fingers.
In the attar format (but not the eau de parfum), the scent takes on a silky texture, like heated beeswax slipping through your fingers. The spikiness of the lavender accent persists, but now it is the soapiness of opoponax resin being pushed to the fore, which gives the scent a pleasantly ‘barbershop’ tonality missing in the eau de parfum format. The eau de parfum settles into a powdery rose and jasmine tandem kept slightly dirty by way of the barnyardy wet-hay narcissus. In the far drydown, Tawaf eau de parfum smells rather like the classical jasmine-civet-rose combination in Joy (Patou) – a little sour, leathery, in short, a true jasmine sambac smell.
The eau de parfum and attar of Tawaf are quite different from one another, so choose with caution. The eau de parfum is sweeter, lusher, and more ‘golden’ in temperament, while the attar is oilier, more herbaceous and bitter, and with its emphasis on the lavender-opoponax accord, a virile green-blue hue on the color wheel.
The attar does not accentuate the jasmine as much as the eau de parfum at first, although it does allow the jasmine to finally break through the herb-resin miasma past hour two. In the attar, the primary focus is on the lavender-ish, shaving foam aspects of opoponax, rather than the jasmine. In the eau de parfum, the herbal shaving cream aspect barely registers, emphasizing instead that skanky jasmine blast in the opening and a classical rose-jasmine-narcissus structure thereafter.
The drydown of the attar is spicier, stronger, and more pungent than the eau de parfum, a fierce crescendo of jasmine, shaving cream, and boot polish. If you are a jasmine fiend, go for the eau de parfum, and if you like the sexy, herbal sourness of skin sweating under a wristwatch, go for the attar.
Tayyiba (Amouage)
Type: mukhallat
Tayyiba opens with a bouquet of sweet, oily, and slightly pungent flowers – mostly lilac, jasmine, and ylang – creating an effect that is soapy and thick rather than fresh, as if the flowers have been muffled under a thin layer of beeswax. Later, a savory orange blossom note not a million miles away from the corn-meal masa feel of Seville à L’Aube (L’Artisan Parfumeur) sweeps in. Overall, Tayyiba is an odd but memorable treatment of traditionally sweet, clear-as-a-bell florals. It is one to sample if you like florals with a muted, salty edge.
Tudor Rose (Mellifluence)
Type: mukhallat
Tudor Rose is one of the most accomplished mukhallats in the Mellifluence stable, and one that personifies Abdullah’s neat fusion of Eastern and Western perfumery cultures. The freshly-cut-grass earthiness of vetiver and deer musk form a thickly furred accord that wraps around the embers of a smoking rose. Its slightly sulky, ‘red-rubied rose in green velvet’ countenance recalls the animalic rose chypres of the 1970s, such as La Nuit (Paco Rabanne), L’Arte di Gucci (Gucci), or even Knowing (Estée Lauder).
However, this is an Eastern take on the rose chypre, so along with that mossy forest floor we get heavy deer musk and two types of real oud oil. By the time we hit the base, it is clear that we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. The dark musk used here is particularly good – velvety and bitter, like 70% cocoa chocolate made liquid. The slightly stale, earthy ‘old school’ Thai oud used in the blend brings some genuinely barnyardy funk to the party, propelling it out of chypre territory and planting it firmly in the humid jungles of the East.
Tudor Rose eventually settles into the quietness of rose-tinted woods, where the sharper notes such as vetiver and rosewood continue to duke it out for some time. If you like animalic rose chypres but also enjoy the exoticism of oud and rose pairings, then Tudor Rose will reward a sampling. One of my favorites from Mellifluence.
Tyrian Purple (Sultan Pasha Attars)
Type: mukhallat
What an over-the-top, edible delight! Tyrian Purple (love the Game of Thrones-ish name) is a dollop of cooked rose jam sitting on top of a smoky, medicinal oud that has been gussied up with enough candied apricots and sugar to tip it into the gourmand category. The gourmand aspect specifically references Middle-Eastern, Indian, and Persian sweet treats such as Rooh Afza, sherbet, and kulfi-like custards flavored with rosewater, saffron, and cardamom. Osmanthus is the headliner here, creating an olfactory vision of silky rose and apricot jam, and platters of freshly-cut fruit so juicy you almost visualize beads of water popping on their skin.
Basically, if you do not smile when you put Tyrian Purple on, then there is something wrong with you. If you love fragrances such as Andy Tauer’s Rose Jam, By Kilian Liaisons Dangereuses, or Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Mood Satin Oud, then there is no reason why you would not love this too.
Ubar (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)
Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil
Amouage’s Ubar is a big-boned floral built around a triumvirate of indolic white florals, ambergris, and sandalwood. Sadly, given that it has been reformulated several times since its launch, with earlier versions more heavily focused on sandalwood than flowers, it is difficult to know what version people are talking about when they refer to Ubar as being a supersonic floral. Furthermore, the quality of the ambergris and jasmine materials has been downgraded with each subsequent reform. Whatever in Ubar was once natural is now more likely to be synthetic.
However, two features mark Ubar out as being uniquely ‘Ubar’ no matter what the version. First is its lemongrass-like freshness up top (due to the bright herb called litsea cubeba) and second, its head-spinning complexity. Ubar is also a perfume an interesting dual personality – a sort of Eastern exoticism meets Western abstract floral perfumery culture clash.
So, how does the dupe fare? In fairness, one can hardly expect a dupe oil to mirror the compositional complexity of an Amouage. And indeed, while the dupe makes a creditable effort, it falls short. In particular, the interestingly bright, sour herbaceous topnote of the original is missing, replaced by a screechy citrus material that immediately sets the flavor dial to ‘harsh’.
The general texture is also off-kilter – soapy and woody rather than bright and salty. The floral bouquet is dimmed and blurred by this soapiness, like a lantern rubbed with wax before being lit. By hour three, the dupe has achieved a sort of uneasy synchronicity with the original Ubar, settling into a soft floral blur that is not unpleasant. But where the original retains a briny herbal brightness all the way through, the dupe collapses into woody vagueness.
However, if the dupe is worn alone, the resemblance to the original is possibly strong enough to pass. Adequate, in other words – but just barely.
Un Bello (Henry Jacques)
Type: concentrated perfume oil
Un Bello is a juicy, peachy floral accord floating freestyle in a nineties-style aquatic musk. It smells blue, in a Calone-driven manner. Given that it accidentally recreates, in faithful detail, the original Acqua di Giò for Women, it would be unconscionable of me to recommend that anyone actually go out and buy this.
Une Vie En Rose (Henry Jacques)
Type: concentrated perfume oil
Unlike most of the other rose-based compositions in the Henry Jacques stable (that I have smelled), Une Vie En Rose is rendered in the syrupy rose mukhallat style of Arabian perfumery rather than in the crisp, citronal-heavy style of the English garden. It does not smell as natural or as ripped-from-nature as Henry Jacques’ other rose-forward perfumes, therefore, but in compensation, the thickeners of labdanum, resins, and myrrh make for a more interesting ride. A smooth but animalic oud oil tucked into the seams gives Une Vie En Rose the feel of a more natural Oud Ispahan.
The innocence of the name puzzles until you remember the husky, grief-stained voice of the woman who sang La Vie En Rose. Edith Piaf would have loved this fragrance. If you adore the musky bite of oud wood smoking on a burner, or the rough sensuality of balsamic roses, then Une Vie En Rose is for you. Fans of Oud Ispahan (Dior Privée), Oud Palao (Diptyque), or even the gorgeously syrupy Rose Nacrée du Desert (Guerlain) – this is the one in the Henry Jacques collection to seek out.
Venezia Giardini Segreti (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)
Type: mukhallat
One of my favorites from La Via del Profumo, Venezia Giardini Segreti frames a voluptuous jasmine against the rough-textured tobacco of ambergris, which creates a backdrop of black tea leaves and ash in the manner of Jasmin et Cigarette (État Libre d’Orange). It is this balance between the damp, fetid lushness of the white flowers and the dryness of the leather, tea, or tobacco that makes Venezia Giardini Segreti so special.
Interestingly, there is also the burnt coffee grounds aroma of real oakmoss. This accord smells a bit like the oakmoss you get in older, vintage chypres like Givenchy III, meaning rather than fresh and bitter, it feels pre-degraded by time and exposure to the air, like green plant stems rotting slowly in murky vase water. This dusty ‘brown’ moss note ages the base of Venezia Giardini Segreti, turning the sultry flowers into the cracked-at-the-elbows leather jacket of Cabochard (Grès), Miss Balmain (Balmain), or and Le Smoking (DSH Perfumes).
Tempered in this way by the grey-green ink of oakmoss, the jasmine feels like one of those dried and salted mystery items you pick up at the Asian store to snack on. It is fantastically sexy, and I far prefer it to La Via del Profumo’s most famous jasmine creation, Tawaf. It is the perfect jasmine perfume for a Bohemian spirit.
Vetiver Blanc (Sultan Pasha Attars)
Type: mukhallat
Vetiver Blanc is sexy as hell. Straight out of the bottle, it is a creamy emulsion of grass and tropical flowers, with a texture close to coconut cream. The gardenia and tuberose absolutes give up their creamy, earthy facets but none of their strident, candied, or rubbery undertones, ensuring that the florals in the blend remain low-key. It smells fertile and damp, like the hummus-rich earth under ylang bushes after a tropical storm. In this, it shares a bond with Manoumalia by Les Nez, considered by many – including myself – to be the ne-plus-ultra of the tropical floral genre.
But the galbanum and the vetiver in Vetiver Blanc run a smoky, rooty thread through the mukhallat, tethering it to the greenery of the jungles and preventing the scent from floating away aimlessly into a pool of pikake island bliss. There is sensuality, but it is reigned in. Which, of course, is what makes this even sexier.
Another welcome surprise – ambergris. The composition of Vetiver Blanc contains 35% real ambergris, procured on the West Coast of Ireland and tinctured by Sultan Pasha himself. It is white ambergris, the highest grade of all, which does not produce much of a scent of its own beyond a sweet seawater minerality. But the role that the white ambergris plays in this composition is vital. It causes all the other notes and materials to glow hotly, as if lit by some internal heat source.
The effect is a gauzy halo of buttery white florals, resins, and creamed grass, all pulsing outwards in concentric circles of scent waves that fill the room and one’s own mouth. I find this incredibly beautiful, sexy, and warm – the perfect white floral for white floral avoiders and the perfect vetiver for the vetiver-averse. It rivals both Songes (Goutal) and Manoumalia (Les Nez) for their damp, fecund sensuality, which, if you know those perfumes at all, is really saying something.
Violet Forever (Agarscents Bazaar)
Type: mukhallat
Only the hardest of hearts would not melt at the opening of this perfume. Violet Forever is a frilly bloomers explosion of sweet, powdery violets, a glitter spackle of violet pastilles pinned lightly to its fabric. It smells like all the colors associated with Easter – lilac, blush, primrose, duck egg blue.
The childlike exuberance of the opening dies back very quickly, however, transitioning into a more honeyed texture which, while still crystalline, renders the violet note syrupy and medicinal. Rose and vanilla maintain the creaminess quotient, but alas, the initial freshness of the violets is lost.
Despite this, the development of Violet Forever still holds some delights, chief among them a delicious rose jam note that marries the jellied texture of lokhoum to the nuttiness of halva. The violet becomes ever more insistently sweet as time passes, as well as unapologetically girly.
If you love violet pastilles, children’s antibiotic syrups, the scent of My Little Pony, or anything dainty and pastel-colored, then Violet Forever just might be your nirvana. For everyone else, just keep in mind that they were not kidding about the Forever part, so unless syrupy violet pastilles are your particular fetish, steer clear. Overall, the sense is of an opportunity missed. The scent briefly teeters on the brink of something great, but rapidly loses its train of thought, lazily circling back to the girlish cliché you expected it to be in the first place.
Violets Blond (Perfume Parlour)
Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil
Dupe for: Tom Ford Violet Blonde
The dupe is almost identical to the original Tom Ford perfume, save for a slightly marshy edge to the iris in the dupe. It nails the violet and iris notes to within an inch of the original, especially the cold suede-like overtones of the orris and the powderiness of the violets. The dupe is as clean and as musky as the original. Longevity and projection are also roughly on par.
The only real difference is that the absence of the sharp, metallic violet leaf at the beginning, and a lighter, less benzoin-heavy drydown. The toned-down presence of the benzoin means that the powder is dialed down about forty percent from the original, a feature that some might enjoy or even prefer. On the flipside, this also translates into a slightly slimmer body – a thin foam pillow instead of a plump goose down one. Overall, though, this is a more than adequate replacement for the by-now-discontinued Tom Ford.
Violette Noyée (Sultan Pasha Attars)
Type: mukhallat
Expectations are such weighty things, aren’t they? The minute Sultan Pasha mentioned that the inspiration for Violette Noyée (‘Drowned Violet’) was Guerlain’s classic Après L’Ondée (‘After the Downpour’), it was inevitable that that we would begin to stake out some pretty lofty goal posts in our heads.
Expectations like these are nigh on impossible to satisfy. If the perfumer produces an exact copy of Après L’Ondée in attar form, then it is just a dupe. If it diverges too far from the original template, then people will scoff that it smells nothing like the original. When a behemoth like Après L’Ondée is involved, therefore, best not to mention it at all. That way, if people find it similar, they will point it out and the whole thing becomes a ‘happy accident’ by a talented perfumer whose work happens to come close to the standard set by a Guerlain classic.
Therefore, to judge Violette Noyée fairly, you really must put all thoughts of Après L’Ondée out of your head. They smell very little alike. But they are both beautiful in their own way. Après L’Ondée is sweet and aerated, with a heart of tender violets and heliotrope gently spiced with anise and clove. The iris in the Guerlain emphasizes the delicately mineral scent of earth after a rain shower. The entire affair is delicate and gauzy.
Violette Noyee, on the other hand, has a bright, hesperidic opening that bristles with lemon and the brushed-metal greenness of violet leaf, which gives way to an earthy ‘forest’ floral. Peppy green florals such as hyacinth and lily of the valley play the main role here, rather than the melancholy purple sweetness of violet flowers. The impression is first and foremost of freshly cut grass and sunshine.
Heliotrope is strongly present in the latter stages, but compared to the Guerlain, it is neither fluffy nor gauzy, but heavily fudgy and pastry-like. The scent develops along the same spicy marzipan track as Après L’Ondée’s big sister, L’Heure Bleue, more than Après L’Ondée itself. This makes sense as the mukhallat is modeled after the rare Après L’Ondée pure parfum, which is a much heavier and denser affair than the eau de toilette (and indeed, much more like L’Heure Bleue).
Being an oil-based perfume, Violette Noyée does not and cannot truly capture the silvery weightlessness of the original, nor does it even attempt to recreate its mineral petrichor effect. But Violette Noyée should be enjoyed as its own creature rather than as a point of comparison. Its bright citrus and violet leaf notes are especially beautiful, providing as they do a fantastic contrast with the damp verdancy of the florals.
The base throws all sense of restraint to the wind and mixes the cool ‘blue’ fudge-like texture of heliotrope, tonka, and amber with spicy, hot carnation, resins, vintage-style musks, and a filthy, saliva-ish ambergris. What a mind warp to travel from cool green florals and juicy lemons to L’Heure Bleue’s dessert trolley, to finally plant its feet firmly in the stinky mammalian effluviant of ambergris. Ethereal it ain’t. But judge Violette Noyée for what it is, please, rather than for what it purports to be.
Walimah Attar (Areej Le Doré)
Type: mukhallat
The opening of Walimah Attar is strangely familiar to me, and it haunts me until I realize that it simply shares what I would characterize as the sepia-toned density common to all blends of natural floral absolutes in attar perfumery. When you mix a bunch of floral absolutes together, they conspire to make a thick, oily-muddy fug of smells only vaguely floral in dilution. Unlike the synthetic representations of flowers in mixed media perfumes or commercial perfumery, where you can clearly differentiate one floral note from another, the flowers in all-natural attars don’t give up their individual identities without a fight. They are melted down into the soup. But still, there are markers that can tip you off as to what is there.
So, for example, in Walimah, I can smell the musky, apple-peel outlines of champaca but not its softer, creamier yellow parts. The gassy miasma of benzene and grape that lingers like fog in still air tells me that ylang plays a role here, even though it doesn’t really smell distinctly of ylang. A note like lemon peel dropped into creamed white honey, with a cutting green leaf undercarriage – this is the magnolia. Finally, there seems to be a big tuberose at loose here, but it is the brown-green, angularly bitter type of tuberose one sees in natural perfumery, rather than the buttery, candied Fracas kind.
This floral miasma all boils down into a sticky, fruity, brown varnish of notes that smells more like balsamic oud than a field of flowers. There is nothing fresh or dewy here. The floral varnish smells aged and, also kind of vaporous, as if evaporating off a piece of old wooden furniture left to fester in a backroom, sending little spores of varnish off into the ether. That tells me there is lots of saffron here, with its dusty, potpourri-ish trail.
Further on, there is a fabulously grassy vetiver threading in and out through the floral fug – not fresh or citrusy like a straight-up vetiver oil, but more like ruh khus, with its soft, mossy smell of winter greens cooked slowly in olive oil. There is also, at times (but not on every testing), a trace of mushroomy earthiness, creating an impression of either myrrh or gardenia.
Texture-wise, Walimah Attar evolves slowly from a dense, syrupy brown varnish to a dusty, soapy base, with a detour here and there to the grassiness of vetiver. The funkiness of the musk gives the scent a sweet, powdery, and vaguely civety finish that, coupled with the oily, abstract florals up top, make me think of Gold Man by Amouage, particularly the vintage version. That is my way of saying that Walimah smells a little dirty in parts, a bit soupy and lounge lizardy, like poor body hygiene covered up with a floral white musk deodorizing powder.
Walimah unfolds to me as a series of block movements rather than distinct notes – first, a sharp, fruity fug of yellow and white florals compressed tightly into an oily brick, followed by the relieving, aerating soap powder of musk and old woods, and finally, darting through everything, that nutty, almost creamy vetiver note.
Although I really like Walimah Attar, it gives me a slight headache every time I wear it. Furthermore, despite its potency for the first four hours, it loses steam quite quickly thereafter. I recommend it highly for men and women who love the following fragrances: Vetiver Blanc (Sultan Pasha), De Vaara (Mellifluence), Champaca Regale (Sultan Pasha), Jardin de Borneo Tuberose (Sultan Pasha), and Gold Man (Amouage).
White Lotus (Anglesey Organics)
Type: essential oil (doubtful)
Anglesey Organics’ version of a white lotus ruh is extremely cheap, which means, of course, that it is likely not the real deal. Still, it is highly enjoyable to wear, even neat on the skin. The opening is of a honeyed white floral, with little pockets of fresh, cool nectar popping in the honeycomb structure. It is lightly creamy, but not heavy or thick. There are some woody and vegetal undertones at play in the background, with a faint tea-with-lemon facet developing much later.
Overall, this is a delicious, sparkling oil that makes you want to knock it back like a glass of iced floral cordial on a hot day. As it develops, there is a parallel to the honeyed creaminess of magnolia, but the white lotus is shot through with a crisp, watery hue that gives it the edge in hot weather. In the far drydown, alongside the tannic tea and citrus notes, there also appears a dry, resinous thickness that is especially toothsome.
Yasminale #1 (Henry Jacques)
Type: concentrated perfume oil
Sweet pea, honeysuckle, Mirabelle plum, freesia – the notes list reads like a perfume made for a twelve-year-old woodland fairy. True to form, the perfume starts off as a tender-hearted floral, with a soft fruitiness that broadcasts ‘youth’ without straying into flashiness.
Things take an unexpected turn, however, when a rather adult creaminess rolls in to support the florals in the rump, an exquisite combination of jasmine, vanilla, and sandalwood that smells like one of those old-fashioned, boozy egg creams you get at a retro diner. Not a perfume for a nymph after all, but for women with deep bosoms, zero thigh gap, and serious sexual intent.
About Me: A two-time Jasmine Award winner for excellence in perfume journalism, I write a blog (this one!) and have authored many guides, articles, and interviews for Basenotes. (My day-to-day work is in the scientific research for development world). Thanks to the generosity of friends and acquaintances in the perfume business, I have been privileged enough to smell the raw materials that go into perfumes and learn about the role they play in both Western and Eastern perfumery. Artisans have sent vials of the most precious materials on earth such as ambergris, deer musk, and oud. But I have also spent thousands of my own money, buying oud oils directly from artisans and tons of dodgy (and possibly illegal) stuff on eBay. In the reviews sections, I will always tell you where my sample came from and whether I paid for it or not.
Source of samples: I purchased samples from Amouage, Anglesey Organics, Perfume Parlour, Agarscents Bazaar, Abdes Salaam Attar, Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics, and Mellifluence. The samples from Sultan Pasha and Areej Le Doré were sent to me free of charge by the brand. Samples from Henry Jacques were sent to me by Basenotes friends in sample passes.
Note on monetization: My blog is not monetized. But if you’d like to support my work or show appreciation for any of the content I put out, you can always buy me a coffee using the little buymeacoffee button. Thank you!
Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.
