Now we come to Middle-Eastern mukhallats. First, let’s get etymology out of the way. The word mukhallat simply means blend in Arabic and refers to a mix of pre-distilled attars and ruhs with other raw materials culturally significant in the Middle-Eastern perfumery, such as ambergris, oud oil, musk, resins, and amber accords. Remember, unlike traditional Indian attars, which are distilled, mukhallats are mixed, using already distilled or compounded materials.
One of the most famous types of mukhallat is the rose-oud mukhallat, a pairing that matches the sour, smoky bluntness of oud oil with the peppery brightness of Taifi rose. This coupling has taken the world of Western commercial perfumery by storm, flooding the market with hundreds of rose-oud fragrances that ape the structure of the original mukhallat template.
Of course, in modern-day parlance, the words attar and mukhallat are used almost interchangeably. Hence, Amouage calls its (sadly discontinued) range of perfume oils attars even though, from a technical perspective, they are mukhallats. The same applies to Sultan Pasha and most other young, modern attar makers – although technically mukhallats made by blending distilled attars and essential oils (some of which the attar maker may even distill himself), the final product is always marketed as an attar, because attar is the word that modern customers know and recognize.
It is important to note that the cultural ties and trade in perfume between India and the Middle-East go back thousands of years, which has led to a symbiotic exchange of materials, knowledge, and even language about perfume between these cultures. For example, the word attar is virtually identical across all major languages in the area, meaning Hindu, Urdu, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, etc. Thanks to the rich melting pot of cultures and arts encouraged by the Mughal dynasty, themselves an empire of traders, attars are something of a fluid, boundary-crossing art, claimed by all cultures in this part of the world as their own.
But the culture of use of perfume throughout Turkey, Northern Africa, and the Middle East has evolved quite differently to that of India. Though it is difficult to speak on this without flattening entire and richly diverse cultures into one generalization, it is broadly accurate to say that people of Arabian, Persian, Turkish, and Northern African descent have a cultural preference for richer and heavier animalic aromas, such as those from oud, deer musk, and ambergris. While Indian attar perfumery is inward-looking, focused almost exclusively on India’s own natural bounty, Middle-Eastern oil perfumery avails itself of a much broader range of raw materials sourced outside their own national borders, likely the result of the centuries-long history of Arabic-Persiatic empire-building and trading.
Oud oil, for example, is sourced from humid jungle areas of a geographically-vast sweep of countries ranging from North India and Borneo island to China and the countries of the Mekong Delta (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand). Resins and gums such as frankincense (loban/luban) and myrrh are more important in Arabic oil perfumery than in Indian perfumery, because these resins are not native to India – they are grown and gathered in the hot, desert-like areas of Arabia and Africa (with some like copal resin, Peru and tolu balsams even coming all the way from Peru, Colombia, and Argentina, in South America). Use of these smoky, sometimes vanillic gums and resins has come to define a whole genre of perfume, formerly known (inaccurately) as the oriental family of perfumes (a term now being replaced by more culturally and etymologically-correct terminology, such as ambery or resinous perfumes, see note here). In general, the Middle-Eastern market for perfume displays a strong, cultural preference for more heavily perfumey smells than Indians.
But the cultural and historical links between these two perfume-making cultures run deep. Arab and Persian perfumers value Indian ruhs and attars for their purity and use them to mix into their mukhallats. One of the biggest attar companies in the world, Ajmal, is an Indian company that distills oud and makes mukhallats almost exclusively for the Middle-Eastern market. Furthermore, it was India, and specifically the Assam region in Northern India, that gave Arabs their first taste of oud oil, stoking a fire in their hearts for the animalic, Hindi (Indian) style of oud oil that burns brightly to this day.
End Note
Reminder: We are working our way through the four categories of oil-based perfumery as I see them, which are (1) traditional distilled attars (discussed here, here, and here), (2) Middle-Eastern mukhallats (this chapter), (3) foundational essential oils such as oud oil and sandalwood oil, and (4) concentrated perfume oils. The main differences are briefly outlined below:
Traditional distilled attars: In contrast to its catch-all categorization today, the word attar originally referred to a specific method of production, and a tradition that was almost exclusively Indian. True attars are made through the slow, laborious process of hydro- or steam-distilling flower petals, herbs, exotic woods, and resins directly into a base of sandalwood oil.
Middle-Eastern mukhallats: While traditional Indian attars are distilled from a fragrant material, mukhallats – meaning ‘mix’ – are compounds of many different oils that have already been distilled, tinctured, or otherwise produced elsewhere.
Foundationalessential oils: Sandalwood and oud are truly essential oils, in that they are the building blocks of their respective styles of perfumery. In traditional Indian attar perfumery, fragrant materials are distilled directly into sandalwood oil, while in Middle-Eastern mukhallat perfumery, the Arabian passion for oud means that a blend that doesn’t feature it is considered a poor excuse for a perfume. Furthermore, both sandalwood and oud feature such complex aroma profiles that they wear more like a complete perfume than an essential oil.
Concentrated perfume oils: Although all attars are by nature concentrated perfume oils, not all concentrated perfume oils are attars. For example, a perfume oil from Bruno Acampora, Le Labo, or BPAL is not an attar. Neither is the Al Rehab dupe for Dakar Noir that you can buy on Amazon for four dollars. They are perfumes in oil format but made in a completely different manner (and intent) than attars.
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.
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!
Complex Indian attars are the result of a multi-distillation process, whereby several fragrant materials are co-distilled in the same deg or created by mixing several distillates and attars together after distillation.
In a multi-distillation process, the various fragrant materials are placed in the deg to be distilled together, with the distillers adjusting and adding to the formula over the course of the ten, or even twenty-day distillation process, beginning each day with a new blend of botanicals, resins, herbs, and spices.
Alternatively, some complex attars are built by mixing already-distilled attars, ruhs, choyas, or sandalwood oils together. Ambery attars, for example, although not a huge feature of Indian attar perfumery, are not derived through a single distillation of an amber material, but instead composed of several complete essential oils from materials such as labdanum and benzoin. Below is a description of some of the most characteristic and significant of complex traditional Indian attars.
Majmua Attar
Majmua attar is a complex blend of four other already-distilled attars and ruhs, namely, ruh khus, ruh kewra, mitti attar, and kadam attar (described individually here). Majmua displays deep, green forest-like tones first, then the pungency of hay or saffron, followed by soft fruits, brown earth, the scent of rain on terracotta pots, herbs, flowers, hay, and moss. Majmua is also suggestive of the furriness of warm animals, without containing even a drop of musk. Evolving over the course of a day, its transition from one set of aromas to the next is nothing short of mesmerizing. If one aroma could be said to predominate, it would be the bitter, mossy greenness of herbs.
Together, the combined aromas in the attar mimic the lush, earthy feel of India during monsoon season. Majmua is powerful to the point of being overbearing, especially to a Western nose. Therefore, it is not a bad idea to dilute it in carrier oil before using as a personal perfume. A Turkish perfumer friend of mine (Omer Pekji) layers it under Serge Lutens’ beastly Muscs Khoublai Khan, and I can confirm that this combination of bitter, green, and foresty with musky, sugary, and rosy works to perfection.
Shamama
Shamama, sometimes also called hina (not to be confused with gul hina, which is a henna-only attar), is a highly complex attar distilled from a compound of more than sixty different aromatic materials such as woods, moss, cloves, ambrette seed, saffron, and sandalwood. Shamama attar also seems to be semi-analogous with so-called shamamatul amber, which possibly involves an evolution of the original formula to include heavier woods, labdanum, and musks. Shamamatul amber can be as pungent and as animalic as some Hindi ouds.
The exact recipe to shamama is a closely-held secret. Each traditional attar-making family has its own recipe, which is handed down from father to son unaltered. The big attar companies also produce their own version of shamama. The diversity among shamama attars means that no one shamama smells like the other.
There are any grades of shamama attar, ranging from $50 per kilo to $2,000 per kilo, depending on the amount, quality, and type of raw materials used (some shamama attars are distilled into pure sandalwood, others over a synthetic solvent like IPM). Interestingly, M.L. Ramnarain, a Kannauj-based attar distillery, which sells most of its shamama attar to Europe and the Middle East, must keep the different shamama distillations destined for different market separate[i]. This is because most shamama attars contain charila, an oakmoss-like lichen, and therefore cannot be sold in the EU, due to the ban on the atranol contained within the material, i.e., much the same issues pertaining to European oakmoss absolute. (Read more about that here).
According to Chris McMahon of White Lotus Aromatics, the traditional shamama attar will normally contain some combination of ‘turmeric, spikenard, yew, oakmoss, cardamom, juniper berry, nutmeg, mace, clove bud, ambrette seed, laurel berry, valerian, and red sandalwood’[i]. It is a recipe that can be varied or added to in a seemingly infinite number of ways. With the advent of cheaper synthetics and the contraction in the traditional art of attar-making, the number of families still producing shamama in the traditional manner is tiny. Most shamama attars on the market these days are a mixture of synthetics and naturals, with many of them smelling surprisingly good.
Even so, it is interesting to look at the old-school method of distilling shamama attar[ii]. It is a process that is far more complex and laborious than a single-material attar, and it takes at least two months to make one from start to finish. The distillation is divided into stages. The first stage is a distillation of charila, a lacy lichen covering rocks in the forests of the Himalayas that possesses an inky, bitter, mossy aroma similar to that of European oakmoss. (Shamama distillations meant for the European market will accordingly skip this particular step). The charila is hydro-distilled directly into sandalwood oil in the classic manner over a period of ten days. The second stage is a distillation of ground-up and lightly roasted aromatic plants, roots, and botanicals, many of which are unfamiliar to the Western nose, like spikenard, valerian root, cyperus root, and sugandh kokila, a dried berry from an evergreen laurel-like tree that grows in Nepal. The aromatics are distilled into the lichen-fragrant sandalwood oil from the first stage.
Photo: Charila, a type of Indian lichen that is similar to oakmoss. Photo by Pranjal Kapoor.
The third stage is a spice and herb distillation. Each day, fresh quantities of pulverized cinnamon, cardamom, mace, nutmeg, clove, patchouli leaves, and ambrette seeds are loaded into the deg, with the vapors pouring directly into the aromatized sandalwood oil in the bhapka, itself already heady with moss and aromatics.
Photo: Aromatics, spice, and dried plant material being loaded into the deg. Photo by Pranjal Kapoor.
An optional fourth stage for the attar wallah, separate to the distillation process, is to prepare a choya. There are three main types. Choya nakh consists of seashells that are first charred, roasted, and smoked over a dry fire in a sand pit, and then macerated and cooked gently in sandalwood oil. Choya nakh is also not permitted as an ingredient for shamama attars destined for the European market, due to the phenols present in the material after the charring process. When strained, the oil is aromatized with a mysteriously smoky, salty aroma. Tango by Aftelier is one of the few artisanal, non-attar perfumes that featured choya nakh (review here), however it is no longer available. Choya loban is a dry distillation of frankincense resin, whereby the liquid tears of resin are either scraped off the inside of the heated degs or the vapors directed into a receiving vessel (without sandalwood oil). Choya Ral is a balsamic dry distillation of the resin of the Sal Tree (Shorea robusta) that yields a dark, sweetly resinous smoky-leathery aroma that is useful in a fougère composition. The attar maker may choose to prepare and add a choya to the main shamama distillate as and when they see fit. The choyas add a smoky, resinous depth to the shamama.
The final stage is mixing the shamama attar with already-distilled attars, such as attar of roses, jasmine, kewra, champaca, and so on. Before finishing, other fragrant materials such as rose hydrosols, musk grains and even ambergris tinctures are added, left to macerate in a sealed pot over a very low fire for twenty-four hours, skimmed for purity, and poured into leather caskets to age and settle. Given the complexity and difficulty involved in producing shamama attar, it is no wonder, then, that a traditionally-distilled hina or shamama attar with the full whack of natural raw materials starts at a minimum of $2,000 per kilo[iii].
Despite their differences, shamama attars do share some basic common characteristics, such as a bitter, medicinal topnote, notes of earth and vetiver, a pungent saffron or henna note with hay and iodine tonalities, a rich ambery-aromatic heart, animalic facets that mimic the scent or texture of ambergris, civet, heavy musk, and Hindi oud, and tenacious basenotes that smell like moss, wood, baked earth, tea leaves, and medicinal ointment.
Kasturi-Type Attars (Black Musk Attars)
Black musk or Kasturi-type attars count as a complex attar rather than a single-material attar because, despite the name, they rarely contain natural deer musk. The hunting and killing of musk deer in India and Pakistan is illegal, and although this does not mean that attars containing real deer musk do not exist, most Kasturi-type attars use other ingredients to approximate the scent of musk. This is more due to issues of cost and availability than legality.
Kasturi-type attars derive their musky aroma through a complex array of aromatics and botanicals such as patchouli, costus root, and vetiver, mixed with either a botanical or synthetic musk. In the past, ambrette seed oil would have been the main material used to mimic the muskiness of genuine deer musk, but today, due to reasons of cost, attar makers likely use other less expensive musk botanicals or a combination of synthetic musk molecules. Musk plays a far more significant part in Arabian perfumery than in traditional Indian attar perfumery.
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.
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.
Photos: Kindly given to me by Pranjal Kapoor with full permission to use in these posts.
[i] The White Lotus Aromatics newsletter on hina (no longer available online)
[ii] I am indebted to Chris McMahon of White Lotus Aromatics for the bulk of the information on the complex process of distilling shamama attars.
Traditional Indian attars (and ruhs) can be divided roughly into two groups. First, there are attars made by distilling a single material, like, for example, rose or vetiver. (These are the subject of this chapter). Then, there are the more complex attars made by co-distilling several materials in the same deg or mixing several distilled attars and ruhs together. The range and diversity of the fragrant materials used in traditional attars is astonishing – Westerners will likely have not heard of half of these plants or combinations.
Indians regard their native plants and herbs as possessing ayurvedic properties and use them accordingly. Attars such as musk, hina (shamama) and majmua, for example, are warming attars for when the weather is cold, whereas mitti, kewra, and ruh khus attars are seen as cooling, refreshing oils to be used in hot, muggy weather. Below is description of the main types of single-material ruhs and attars distilled from one single aromatic material using the hydro-distillation method.
Ruh Khus
Translating roughly to ‘the spirit of vetiver’, ruh khus is an essential oil traditionally distilled from wild vetiver roots using traditional methods in Northern India. Its characteristic color – a glowing mélange of lurid greens and blues – actually comes from the copper vessels used in the distillation process rather than the rhizome itself. The copper pots add a slightly metallic tinge to the aroma profile of the oil, but this is considered a desirable property. Ruh Khus used to be exclusively distilled from wild vetiver roots, but due to unpredictable yields and the labor intensive nature of the distillation process, plantation-grown roots are increasingly used.
The scent of Ruh Khus is cleansing and spiritual, encompassing as it does all the possible facets of pure vetiver oil, from soft, buff-colored nutty notes to deep green foresty aspects. The main flavor wall of a Ruh Khus will always be the grassy-nutty-rooty aroma of vetiver root, but behind the main bouquet, you can pick up on the more complex facets of the root’s aroma profile such as sweet spices, smoke, earth, roses, olives, grass, clay, saffron, and hazelnuts. Its fresh, grassy aroma is most appreciated during hot summer weather, when it provides a cooling effect. Indians also make a very refreshing drink (khus water) from vetiver roots macerated in water.
Ruh Gulab
Gul means rose in Hindi, although the word is sometimes also loosely interpreted as ‘flower’. Ruh gulab is an extremely costly essential oil of roses, distilled from rosa damascena rose petals (the Bulgarian and Turkish varietal of rose). It is also known as rose otto. The scent of ruh gulab is strong, spicy-sweet, and richly rosy. Ruh gulab is distilled primarily over a forty-day period (mid-March to late April), which is when the roses are at their best, and exclusively in Hasayan, a village in North India that lies 200km away from Kannauj[1]. Ruh gulab is so costly to produce that what is usually marketed as ruh gulab is actually an attar of roses, i.e., rose distilled over a solvent such as sandalwood oil or IPM.
Attar of Roses/ Attar Gulab
When rose petals are distilled into pure sandalwood oil or another solvent, it is no longer a ruh, but an attar, known worldwide as the famous attar of roses (or sometimes, Attar Gulab). Attar of roses production takes place in Kannauj itself over nine months of the year, using Bourbon roses (Rosa bourboniana) rather than rosa damascena.
Ruh Kewra
Translating to ‘soul of the screwpine flower’, this beautiful ruh smells like raw honey and fresh, creamy white flowers undercut by a delicate fruit note. Ruh Kewra is extracted from the kewra flower (Pandanus odoratissimus), a plant native to Odisha state, through the steam distillation process. The top notes are rather piercing and shrill, like sucking on a copper penny, but it subsequently develops into a sweet, smooth fruity-floral aroma that is very pleasant.
A Kewra Attar is similar to a Ruh Kewra, but as the name suggests, the attar version is not a pure essential oil of the material (screwpine) but instead distilled over a solvent such as sandalwood oil (if natural) or IPM, TEC, Migyol, etc. (if synthetic). Kewra is very valuable to the tobacco and food industry because it is potent enough to flavor syrups, cosmetics, and tobacco leaves without losing any of its characteristic honey and fruit tones. Correspondingly, when used in attar perfumery, attar wallahs must be careful not to allow kewra to overtake all the other elements.
Kewra is also popularly known as pandan. Pandan leaves are used as liberally in Eastern cookery as vanilla is in Western cookery. The leaves can be chewed or used to wrap up sticky rice and chicken, but it is most commonly used to flavor desserts, sweet syrups, and drinks. Pandan syrup leaves a hauntingly sweet, floral taste in the mouth that, once tasted or smelled, will never be forgotten.
Mitti Attar
Mitti is one of those extraordinary attars that make one wonder at the resourcefulness of man and his determination to make perfume out of everything. Mitti is an attar distilled from the dry, cracked earth of India at the end of the dry season, and it smells of exactly that moment when the first drops of rain of the monsoon season come down and drench the cracked earth. For many Indian people, mitti is the scent of longing.
The process of making mitti attar is a complex and arduous one. First, villagers will identify a dried-up well, river, or lake where they can excavate earth that will still have a little moisture in it. Clods of earth are dug up from the ground and transported in trucks to open-air potteries, where potters take the clods and use water to massage them into a sort of dough or clay, which they then shape into cup-like vessels. The potters partially bake the cups in kilns, whereupon they are removed and brought to the distilleries[i].
As described very beautifully by Christopher McMahon on the White Lotus Aromatics blogpost on mitti (unfortunately no longer available), the partially-baked earthen cups are then stacked one on top of another in the deg, the copper cooking cauldron, sealed, and unusually for an attar, first heated without water in order to allow the mysterious earth molecules to vaporize and imbue the sandalwood oil with their scent more strongly. Only later is the water added, and when it is, it is fed through a small hole in the deg rather than unsealing the whole pot and exposing the delicate baked earth to the air.
The point of this process is to aromatize the receiver oil most strongly with the scent of dry, baked earth, before adding water. The addition of water alters the scent of the vapor slightly, shifting from dusty earth to slightly moist soil. Since the mitti attar captures both the dry dust of sunbaked earth and the scent of raindrops hitting that dry earth, using this combination of distilling methods ensures both dry and damp facets are captured.
Unlike most other attars, the deg is cooked over a fire only for two hours a day before being allowed to cool and rest. After the water is siphoned off the essential oil and sandalwood in the bhapka, the deg is loaded with new earthen cups, dry baked, and the hydrosol from the day before added in later. The process is repeated over twenty days and stopped when the oil in the bhapka is strongly aromatized with the scent of earth, both dry and damp.
The mysterious scent owes its strange, haunting power to the compound called geosmin, which recalls the smell of things once rain has fallen on them: think of the hot asphalt smell of the streets in the city after a downpour, or the smell of earth and grass out in the countryside. Mitti attar captures the petrichor effect of rain drenching the red, cracked earth in India, because it is made from that same earth. It smells simultaneously musty and earthy, with a certain ‘red’ dustiness one associates with terracotta pots.
Kadam Attar
It is challenging to talk about kadam because it is expensive, and almost impossible to source outside of India. However, it is one of the most prized floral attars in India and forms a key component of the famous majmua attar, so it is worth discussing on that basis alone.
Distilled from the small, yellow bushy flowers of the Anthocephalus cadamba, kadam (sometimes written as kandam) produces a complex floral oil said to possess a green, almost minty topnote akin to Borneo oud wood, and a yellow floral tonality in the base that runs close to the creaminess of champaca.
Attar Mehndi / Gul Heena
Attar Mehndi, or Gul Heena, a name which translates to ‘flower of henna’, is an attar derived from distilling henna leaves (Lawsonia Inermis) directly into sandalwood oil. Mehndi attar comes from the same plant as the popular red dye that is used to paint elaborate patterns onto the hands and face of brides in most Indian weddings, be it a Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh ceremony. There is also a Ruh Mehndi, but it is very expensive at $43,000 per kilogram (while the attar ranges between $500 and $5,000 per kilogram)[2].
The scent of mehndi attar is that of earth, hay, flower petals, ink, baked clay, and iodine. (The ruh smells greener, with a tobacco-ish facet). It possesses a haunting astringency that can suck all the moisture from your nostrils. I find Mehndi attar to be roughly in the same aroma family as saffron and turmeric, although these are spices and therefore dustier, sharper, and more austere.
Confusingly, the name ‘hina’ (heena) is often applied to the complex mixed attar known as shamama, which leans on Gul Heena as a key component of its aroma profile. According to Pranjal Kapoor, whose family business distills mehndi attar, it blends very well with oud oil and ruh khus. Its scent profile is not very well known outside of Europe and is therefore sadly under-utilized in Western niche or artisanal perfumery. Strangelove NYC’s fallintostars is a happy exception – it uses a heena attar distilled by M.L. Ramnarain. (Review here).
Jasmine ruhs and attars (Motia, Chameli, and Juhi)
In the Kama Sutra, jasmine is described as the most carnal smell in nature. But jasmine balances its fleshy, creamy, and sensual side with a dewy freshness. Innocence and carnality in one flower – an irresistible combination! The word jasmine comes from the Arabic word for the flower, yâsamîn, which itself comes from the Persian word for it, again demonstrating the cultural and etymological fluidity between the Indian, Persian, and Arab worlds when it comes to perfume.
Jasmine petals can be distilled into either a ruh (pure essence) or an attar (distilled into sandalwood oil). There are three different types of jasmine species used in attars, and thus three different names for the attars. Motia (or mogra, as it is sometimes written) is the most popular, and is made from Jasminum sambac, the famous ‘Arabian’ jasmine. Ruh motia is distilled exclusively in Kannauj (whereas solvent-extracted absolutes and concretes can be found elsewhere). Chameli attar is made from Jasminum grandiflorum, the type of jasmine grown in India and in Grasse and used in classic French perfumery. Juhi attar is made from Jasminum auriculatum. The auriculatum variety (Juhi attar) is simply a three-petalled subset of the sambac jasmine, and so the differences between them are negligible. The differences between sambac and grandiflorum, on the other hand, are more significant.
Sambac jasmine (motia or mogra) is lean and sharp, with a spicy edge that some find addicting. Also known as Arabian jasmine, Sambac is full-throated, fruity, leathery, and often a bit coarse. Sambac jasmine is usually more indolic than grandiflorum, but I find that it really depends on the individual batch. There is a surprising greenness to sambac jasmine, with a crisp, minty facet that does a nice job of balancing out its spicy, indolic side. Some Sambac jasmine oils have a tea-like character as well.
The grandiflorum variety (Chameli) is the epitome of refined sensuality – a lady to the sambac’s tramp. It is sweet, luscious, and full-bodied, with a hint of overripe fruit that approaches decay in the most charming way possible. Under some circumstances, it can smell like petrol, bananas, or bubblegum, largely due to the strong presence of benzyl acetate, an isolate in the chemical make-up of both jasmine and ylang that contributes to its tropical, steamy character. Most attars and mukhallats reviewed in this Guide use the sambac variety of the flower (the so-called Arabian jasmine), although in India, practically every variant of the flower is revered and appreciated.
As an aside, I have not been overly impressed with the way jasmine oil is used in mukhallat or attar perfumery beyond the basic motia attar, which is nice in and of itself. When used in complex compositions and blends, I find that the special characteristics of the sambac tend to get swallowed up and flattened out into an overly sweet ‘bubblegum’ accord that seems to be analogous with other sweet florals like orange blossom or champaca. In my experience, Sultan Pasha makes the best complex jasmine-focused attars available today, and Abdul Samad Al Qurashi the dullest.
Other Flowers: Genda, Nargis, Lotus, and Champa
Genda attar is made from marigold (tagetes minuta), which, for a flower, smells uniquely herbaceous, bitter, and spicy. Its astringent tonality has something in common with saffron, and indeed, the two are often blended together. Calligraphy Saffron by Aramis is a good example of a commercial niche fragrance where saffron and tagetes are used to complement each other, leaving a synesthetic imprint of something sharply yellow-gold in the wearer’s mind. Genda attar is uncommon outside of India, but marigold itself is used quite cleverly in some other mukhallats and perfume oils, one example being Aroosah by Al Rehab.
Nargis is the Indo-Persian word for narcissus (daffodils, jonquils), and so nargis attar is made using narcissus oil. Wherever this is sold online, it is described as possessing a pleasantly fruity and floral aroma. Do not believe a word of it. Narcissus oil smells green but also ludicrously filthy, with the barnyardy twang of a stable packed to the rafters with dirty hay. It eventually softens into a fresh yellow-green floral aroma that is indeed very similar to the smell of fresh daffodils. Narcissus is used extensively in fine French perfumery to give florals a starchy-oily greenness perched between freshness and dirtiness.
There are three different types of lotus (kamal) attars, but only two of those types (pink lotus and white lotus) technically belong to the true lotus family of nelumbo nucifera. Then there is the blue lotus of Egypt, which, strictly speaking, belongs to the lily family. Lotus flowers are revered in Buddhist and Hindi culture, long considered to be a direct route to spirituality.
Both the pink and white lotus varieties are extremely expensive to produce, requiring 250,000 flowers to make just one kilogram of lotus concrete, which in turn yields only about 250 grams of absolute after washing[ii]. This to emphasize just how costly true lotus absolute is, and how rarely seen on today’s market, especially outside of India itself. I have smelled a white lotus absolute but cannot attest as to its authenticity. The absolute of pink and white lotus flowers smells golden, honeyed, soft, powdery, and somewhat resinous. Voyage 2019 by Hiram Green (review here) is the rare Western niche perfume to feature natural pink lotus oil as an ingredient.
Champa attar is perhaps the most famous floral attar from India. It is made from the champaca flower, revered across the Indian subcontinent and much of tropical Asia as a symbol of sacred femininity. Champaca absolute smells rich and creamy, similar in general aroma profile to magnolia, but with a denser, muskier body weight. It features hints of bubblegum, green apple peel, mint, and apricot. The musky nuances of champaca are interesting, because it sometimes comes across as indolic, but then at other times, as clean and as starchy as a laundry musk.
It must be the clean, fruity facets of the flower that dominate for most, however, because this is a flower traditionally associated with cleanliness. In fact, the word ‘champa’ gave rise to the word ‘shampoo’ by way of the Sanskrit word for champaca, ‘champo’, which means ‘to massage’[iii]. Champaca oil is widely used in Asia to fragrance many of its functional products such as soap, detergent, and shampoo.
Champaca is possessed of a steamy, almost tropical character that can remind one of hot basmati rice and green tea. It has an indolic facet like jasmine (although less distinctive) and a heady fruity side that makes it similar to some aspects of ylang (but more delicate). It is a traditionally feminine flower, prized by women for its sensual but clean character. Champaca oil is also used in the recipes for traditional Indian pressed cone or stick incense, the world-famous nag champa.
Aromatics and spices: Indians distill attars and essential oils from a very broad range of aromatics and spices not listed here, such as charila (an oakmoss-like lichen), patchouli, saffron, and spikenard (jatamansi). These will be discussed in full detail in the section of the Attar Guide that deals with earthy, spicy, and aromatic notes in oil-based perfumery.
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.
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.
Photos: All photos used in this chapter were provided to me by Pranjal Kapoor, with full permission to use.
[i] I am indebted to Chris McMahon of White Lotus Aromatics for his detailed description of the process of making mitti attar in his 2000 newsletter (sadly no longer available)
[ii] As above, Chris McMahon’s description of white and pink lotus absolutes informed this section, but is unfortunately no longer available online.
[iii] The Encyclopedia of Essential Oils, by Julia Lawless, 2014 edition, published by HarperThorsons, pg. 72
Attar – an old Persian word for perfume (ațr, pronounced atir) – is the world’s earliest form of fragrance still in existence today. The word ‘attar’ is used in some form in most of the languages of the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, for example, ittar or ittr in Hindu and Urdu, ‘etr in Arabic, and ațr in modern-day Farsi. The words ottar, atar, athar, and otto are also forms of the word attar, and used pretty much interchangeably.
Originally, the word referred to any fragrant smell emanating from a person, thing, or plant. For example, if a person had particularly sweet-smelling skin, his or her scent might be described as attar, as in ‘Da-yum, Fatima, you smell attar, girl’. But with the discovery of man-made interventions such as distillation, maceration, and enfleurage, the word attar began to specifically refer to perfumes made using those new methods[i]. When people discovered how to extract essential oils from plants, woods, and resins in the early 1600s, the word ‘attar’ began to be associated almost exclusively with essential oil extracted from roses. Beyond the world famous attar of roses, few outside India were aware of the incredible diversity and range of raw materials beyond rose that could be distilled, extracted, macerated, or enfleuraged to make attars.
Perhaps proving that fragrance is a marker of true civilization, attars were first made by inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization (3300 BCE-1300 BCE) which was, along with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, was one of the three major cradles of civilization. Covering most of modern-day Pakistan and India, the people living there at the time were Indian in the cultural-historical sense. These people were the first to distill and make attars. And despite attar being a word that was later co-opted by Persian and Arab cultures, its origins remain deeply rooted in Indian culture and taxonomy. Interestingly, clay pots (degs) unearthed belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization are almost identical to the ones used today in modern-day India to produce attars.
There is no evidence that attar-making died when the Indus Valley Civilization did. However, attar making truly rose to global prominence under the Mughal Empire in 1526, a Turco-Mongolian dynasty in India that was culturally Persian. The Mughal emperors and princes, passionate about perfume, oversaw the flowering of a golden age of attar-making that outlasted the Mughal Empire itself, which ended over three centuries later in 1857. Ultimately, therefore, although the tradition of making attars is culturally an Indian one, it was the Persiatic culture of the Mughal Empire that caused attar making to flourish past the borders of India herself. So enthusiastically did the Mughal emperors award money and prestige to local Indian attar makers (attar wallahs) that they birthed a golden age for attar making.
‘When she was making rose water, a scum formed on the surface of the dishes into which the hot rose water was poured from the jugs. She collected this scum little by little; when much rose water was obtained a considerable quantity of the scum was collected. It is of such strength in perfume that if one drop be rubbed on the palm of the hand it scents a whole assembly and it seems as if many red rosebuds had bloomed at once. There is no other scent of equal excellence to it. It restores hearts that have gone and brings back withered souls. In reward for that invention, I presented a string of pearls to the inventor.’
From Deg to Lab: The Sad State of Attar Making in India
Photo by Rebecca Matthews on Unsplash
It takes enormous skill and knowledge to make an attar in the traditional way, and having practiced it for over five thousand years, the Indians are the masters of this art. The traditional seat of the attar-making world is Kannauj, the capital city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Kannauj-based attar-makers supplied the princes of the Mughal Empire with attars for more than three centuries and have a long history of trading with the Middle East. Surrounded by silt-rich fields and valleys that grow an extraordinary range of exotic flowers, aromatics grasses, roses, and herbs, Kannauj is justifiably called the Grasse of the attar world.
Between 90 to 90% of all essential oils, ruhs, and attars produced in Kannauj are consumed by India’s domestic food and tobacco industries, where they are used to flavor cigarettes, chewing gum, dessert syrups, and food bases. The remaining is used domestically as perfume or exported abroad, mainly to the Middle East (the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait). But the millennia-old attar industry in Kannauj is under threat from the most modern of foes, namely, the cost and availability of key raw materials, and a rising economic class with very different tastes to their forefathers.
Materials such as rose and jasmine have always been expensive to produce, because they are labor-intensive, and a great quantity of fragrant materials is required to produce even a small amount of a ruh or attar. A ten milliliter bottle of genuine rosa damascena oil (ruh gulab) costs approximately $250 in Kannauj, but the same amount of synthetic rose oil costs only $8. Adulteration and fakery of the costliest oils has always been an issue.
What is (relatively) new is the dearth of sandalwood oil, the essential oil that has always been a key component of traditional Indian attars. As will be detailed in the section on sandalwood, the great sandalwood forests of Mysore and other wood-producing regions are almost depleted due to years of over-harvesting, corruption, and careless management. In the late nineties, in response to the sandalwood crisis, the state governments of Karnataka, Mysore, and Uttar Pradesh all placed severe restrictions on the harvesting and trading of sandalwood oil. At a national level, the Indian Government banned the export of sandalwood outside of India’s borders.
Although the supply channel to the great perfumery houses of Chanel and Guerlain in Paris has been kept partly open (through private French ownership of plantations), the restrictions meant that the supply of Mysore oil outside of India is extremely limited, as well as technically illegal. In turn, the flow of oil to the domestic attar industry dried to a trickle. With only tiny amounts of santalum album still reaching the domestic market, prices within India have risen to levels that price most attar makers out of the picture.
The reduced flow of oil to attar-producing houses in Kannauj has resulted in many attar houses packing up and leaving to settle in areas of India such as Mumbai, where sandalwood oil is still perhaps a little easier to obtain, thanks to less stringent government oversight than in Uttar Pradesh. But a big question mark hovers over the purity of the sandalwood oil that does remain on the market in India, whether in Mumbai or elsewhere. Because of scarcity, costs have escalated, leading to what seems now to be a common adulteration of the oil with paraffin, DPG, or inferior wood oils.
When you put together the high costs of production and the low availability of key ingredients, it is no wonder that many of the small, independent attar-making houses in Kannauj have gone out of business. At its height, approximately sixty percent of the population of the 1.7 million-strong city was employed in the attar industry. Until the restrictions on sandalwood oil production came about in the nineties, there were over seven hundred distilleries operating in Kannauj. Now there are only a hundred and fifty. The traditional attar making industry has shrunk by almost eighty percent over the past three decades.
But perhaps the greatest pressure on the traditional Indian attar-making industry in Kannauj has been the rise in demand for Western designer perfumes among young, upwardly mobile males in the large Indian cities, a new socio-economic class that emerged during India’s great economic turnaround in urban areas in the nineties. Flush with new wealth and an emerging middle class, attention has turned away from the traditional Indian attars and towards more modern, Western-orientated grooming products. The Indian trade association, ASSOCHAM, reports that the demand for Western brands such as Azzaro, Burberry, Chanel, and Armani amounts to a hefty 30% of total fragrance consumption in India and is worth almost $300 million.
In order to pivot towards the market, two things happened in Kannauj. First, the traditional Indian attar makers still in business have scrambled to adapt to a new business model. While some (such as M. L. Ramnarain Perfumers) have stuck to old distillation methods, and switched to using solvents other than sandalwood, many other outfits, especially the Mumbai-based ones, have lowered their cost base (and therefore prices) by using paraffin oils to pad out their formulas to retain the interest of the modern Indian fragrance market. A quick scan of IndiaMart shows many attar houses now offering so-called ‘traditional’ motia (Sambac jasmine) and gulab (rosa damascena) attars for as little as $45 per liter, a price that in and of itself betrays its synthetic composition. If made in the traditional way in Kannauj, using a deg and bhapka, and real jasmine petals, a liter of genuine motia attar would cost more in the region of $5,400[ii].
Second, some attar factories in Mumbai began focusing on churning out cheap perfume oils and dupes of the most popular Western fragrances instead of traditional Indian attars or ruhs. These have become something of a modern success story, in the business sense. These factories create their oils in the laboratory rather than in the traditional deg and bhapka, and they don’t even pretend that there is anything traditionally Indian about them. In fact, it is their Western character that is emphasized, designed to appeal to young Indian tastes. Their oils are also commonly called ‘attars’, which must feel like salt in the wound of any attar house in Kannauj still distilling their attars in the time-honored manner.
Somewhere in the nineties, therefore, the meaning of the word attar began its slow, inexorable drift away from its traditional meaning (raw plant material distilled into a sandalwood base) to a more modern interpretation, meaning any perfume that comes in oil format. The word attar now can mean anything from a shamama attar distilled for two months to a knock-off of Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather that costs less than a hundred rupees.
All is not lost, however. Despite the problems in the industry at present, some small-scale traditional attar production continues, and given its millennia-long history, it is not likely that traditional Indian attars will ever disappear completely. The pendulum of interest will swing back again in that direction, especially if there is a return to valuing heritage and tradition, as has been the case in many countries once the dust of an economic boom has settled. Artisanship will always be valued as a segment of the total fragrance industry, alongside an appreciation for excellent raw materials.
How Traditionally Distilled Attars and Ruhs are Made
Photo by Rowan Lamb on Unsplash
Traditional distilled attars are made in much the same way as they were way during the Indus Valley Civilization. The main components of traditional attar making are copper or earthen drums called a deg, a copper receiving vessel (containing sandalwood oil) called a bhapka, and the slowest and most gentle of all extraction techniques, namely hydro-distillation. Steam distillation, which is conducted at much higher temperatures, is also used, but only for harder resin or woody materials less likely to burn than, for example, more delicate materials such as jasmine petals.
Photo courtesy of Pranjal Kapoor
The process is slow and laborious. First, up to forty-five kilos of fragrant materials – for example, rose petals, henna flowers, or jasmine blossoms – are loaded into the deg. The deg is then filled to the top with water so that the fragrant materials float freely in the liquid, and the lid sealed with a mixture of wet clay, straw, and cotton fibers. The deg rests on top of a clay or brick oven that is maintained at a very low heat throughout the day. Once the fire is lit, it will be kept going for at least eight hours[iii].
Photo courtesy of Pranjal Kapoor
Once the deg is heated, the aromatic vapors begin to build up inside the pot and these then pass through an angled bamboo pipe into the long-necked copper bhapka waiting underneath the deg in a shallow basin of water, which serves to instantly cool the vapors flowing into the bhapka and change it into liquid. The awaiting bhapka will already contain up to five kilograms of pure sandalwood oil, prized for both its beautiful aroma and fixative properties. Indian attar makers are extremely skilled at keeping temperatures steady and low throughout the process, often sponging the deg down with cool water if they feel that it is overheating.
Photo courtesy of Pranjal Kapoor
At the end of the day, the fire is extinguished and the liquid in the bhapka is left to cool and settle overnight. In the morning, the water (called a hydrosol) has separated from the oil and is carefully siphoned off to be poured back into the deg for the new days’ worth of distilling. Fresh fragrant materials are placed in the deg, along with the hydrosol, and the process is repeated. Most distillations take between ten and twenty days to complete, all the time adding fresh fragrant materials and re-using the hydrosol, which by the end will have passed through the flowers so many times that it itself is fragrant and can be sold for use in skincare and food preparation.
But the real prize is what’s in the bhapka – a thick sandalwood oil fragrant with the heady scent of the flowers, herbs, or other aromatic materials. The attar is then poured into flasks made from soft calfskin or lambskin leather, materials just porous enough to allow any excess water in the mixture to evaporate but sturdy enough to keep the fragrant attar inside. The flasks are stored in a dark, dry place until the attar has matured and settled into its final aroma, a process that takes at least a year but can take up to ten.
Sometimes, attars make use of materials that cannot be extracted using steam or water, such as resins and gums. In such cases, the material – for example, frankincense gum or myrrh resin – is heated up until it produces liquid tears that are scraped off the inside of the heated deg and then mixed into sandalwood oil. The attars are then macerated, filtered, stored, and matured in the same way as the regular floral attars.
Then there are the ruhs. Ruh in a Sanskrit word for ‘essence’ or ‘spirit’. Ruhs are essential oils distilled from a limited number of Indian flowers, herbs, and plants in much the same way as attars, i.e., gentle hydro-distillation using the traditional deg and bhapka. Unlike attars, however, ruhs are not distilled into sandalwood but left in their undiluted state. At the end of a distilling day, the distillate is allowed to rest and cool, and the next morning, the water is siphoned off the essential oil. The ruh is then packaged into small flasks and allowed to rest, as for attars. Due to the lack of carrier oil, ruhs are far more perishable than attars, and must be stored well away from the light. Ruhs are costly to produce and the number of materials that can be distilled into ruhs is limited. According to White Lotus Aromatics, these include jasmine (all types), rosa damascena, kewra (screwpine flowers), and khus (wild vetiver roots).
End Note: The four building blocks of oil-based perfumery as I see them, are (1) traditional distilled attars, (2) Middle-Eastern mukhallats, (3) foundational essential oils such as oud oil and sandalwood oil, and (4) concentrated perfume oils. Here is a brief summary of the four categories:
Traditional distilled attars: The subject of this chapter. In contrast to its catch-all categorization today, the word attar originally referred to a specific method of production, and a tradition that was almost exclusively Indian. True attars are made through the slow, laborious process of hydro- or steam-distilling flower petals, herbs, exotic woods, and resins directly into a base of sandalwood oil.
Middle-Eastern mukhallats: While traditional Indian attars are distilled from a fragrant material, mukhallats – meaning ‘mix’ – are compounds of many different oils that have already been distilled, tinctured, or otherwise produced elsewhere.
Foundationalessential oils: Sandalwood and oud are truly essential oils, in that they are the building blocks of their respective styles of perfumery. In traditional Indian attar perfumery, fragrant materials are distilled directly into sandalwood oil, while in Middle-Eastern mukhallat perfumery, the Arabian passion for oud means that a blend that doesn’t feature it is considered a poor excuse for a perfume. Furthermore, both sandalwood and oud feature such complex aroma profiles that they wear more like a complete perfume than an essential oil.
Concentrated perfume oils: Although all attars are by nature concentrated perfume oils, not all concentrated perfume oils are attars. For example, a perfume oil from Bruno Acampora, Le Labo, or BPAL is not an attar. Neither is the Al Rehab dupe for Dakar Noir that you can buy on Amazon for four dollars. They are perfumes in oil format but made in a completely different manner (and intent) than attars.
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.
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.
[i]F. Aubaile-Sallenave, Encyclopædia Iranica, Vol. III, Fasc. 1, pp. 14-16; available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/atr-perfume (accessed online, 14 December 2017).
[ii] Based on 120ml of hydro-distilled motia attar costing $650 on White Lotus Aromatics
[iii] L’Inde des Parfums by Nicolas de Barry & Laurent Granier, published by Éditions du Garde-Temps, ISBN: 2-913545-33-5, 2004.
One big misconception I have come across while exploring the world of oil-based perfumery concerns purity. Attars, mukhallats, oud oils, and concentrated perfume oils (CPOs) are, technically speaking, pure perfumes because they do not contain alcohol or stabilizers. However, many people have interpreted the moniker ‘pure perfume’ to mean that attars are botanically pure or even all-natural.
Forget that, please. Although this may still be the case for traditionally-distilled Indian attars made in a deg and bhapka, it is certainly not true for most modern Indian ‘attars’, dupe oils, and Middle-Eastern mukhallats. And when it comes to American indie perfume oils or the big luxury niche perfume oil producers, you may be certain that they are composed using as precise a formula of synthetics and naturals as a commercial perfume.
The term for a blend of synthetics and naturals in any perfume formula is mixed media. Most oil-based perfumes on the market are actually mixed media perfumes. If you visualize all oil-based perfumery as a pie chart, a sliver of the pie represents the traditionally-distilled attars and artisanal ouds, the largest portion of the pie represents mixed media perfumes, and a modest but sizeable wedge represents the all-synthetic oil perfumes, which are the dupes, cheapies, and drugstore roll-ons.
Many people are surprised to hear that attars and mukhallats can and do contain synthetics. It goes against the exotic image that these perfumes enjoy. But in fact, modern Indian attar makers and Middle-Eastern perfume companies are as enthusiastic consumers of synthetic aromachemicals as any other segment of the fragrance industry. One attar company, Swiss Arabian, is so-called because of its fondness for, and patronage of, Givaudan, the massive Swiss company that supplies a broad range of synthetics, natural raw materials, and flavorings to the food and fragrance industries.
Therefore, while it is true that pure oud oils and traditional Indian attars do not contain aromachemicals synthesized in laboratories, most modern attars, mukhallats, and concentrated perfume oils do. Even some of Amouage’s world-famous and now sadly discontinued attars contained, to varying degrees, synthetics. Indeed, considering how heavy or muddy all-natural compositions can be, many are improved by them. Lift, space between molecules, expansiveness – these are all things afforded by synthetic aromachemicals.
Try not to let this bother you. The ‘clean beauty’ trend in cosmetics and fragrance, coupled with the mold-on-a-wall blooming of pseudoscience on the Internet (promoted and perpetuated by cynical influencers), has imbued words such as ‘natural’ and ‘synthetic’ with a largely irrational, emotive power that transcends the facts to become a strange brew of personal values, beliefs, or branding.
It has often been said but bears repeating anyway: ‘synthetic’ does not equal ‘bad’, just as ‘natural’ does not equal ‘good’. Arsenic is a natural that, I think we can agree, should never make it into a face mask or a suppository. (Cross all fingers and toes that not even Gwyneth Paltrow is that dopey). Atorvastatin, the drug my husband takes to control his high cholesterol, is a life-saver – and entirely synthetic. Unfortunately, with the rise of pseudoscience in the cosmetics arena, words like ‘synthetic’ and ‘chemical’ have become the C words of modern parlance. Given that everything we consume and see, and touch is made up of chemicals (air, water, etc.), including, of course, the very products touted as ‘clean beauty’, this is all very stupid indeed.
Readers will surely have their own feelings on the issue of naturals versus synthetics, but unless you are sensitive to a particular synthetic aromachemical that makes you want to tear your own skin off with your teeth, there is no reason for this to become the ideological hill you die on. What we can agree to do is to assign the words ‘synthetic’ and ‘chemical’ a negative value only when there is a nasty aftertaste to a perfume, or an awkward edge that denotes poor or clumsy use of a synthetic. For example, I am particularly sensitive to Ambroxan, a synthetic ambergris replacer. When massively overdosed in a composition, as in Dior Sauvage, all I smell is musky, radiant pain. Yet, when sensitively dosed, or tucked away into a far off corner of the fragrance, as in Eau Duelle eau de parfum (Diptyque), I find it lovely – like cold, juniper-scented air.
In other words, synthetics are a bit like children in that there are no bad children, only bad parents (i.e., some perfumers, the brands who set the briefs for perfumers, but also, to be fair, market trends that must be catered to, such as the depressingly modern demand for perfumes so strong and so radiant that you can taste them in the back of your throat)[i]. Synthetics and naturals are simply inert materials, sitting there waiting to be animated into something by a perfumer. In the reviews section, therefore, if I say that an oil smells synthetic, understand that I am not attaching any value judgment to the use of synthetics versus naturals but rather to its dosage in a blend or a lack of finesse in blending. That is all.
Note that the issue of natural versus synthetic perfumery is generally not as important to consumers in India and the Middle-East as it is in the West. In the Middle-East, consumers are generally more concerned with what the finished perfume smells like than with the naturalness or purity of each of the ingredients. They like perfume to smell amazing and strong, and the devil may care what makes it so. Many customers in the United Arab Emirates, for example, place a premium on oudy mukhallats smelling convincingly of Indian (Hindi) oud and are not overly concerned about the blending or stretching out with other oils that needs to occur for this to be economically feasible.
Likewise, in India today, young men and women are increasingly apt to choose lighter, Western-style oil perfumes made in the modern manner, i.e., with lots of synthetics to achieve an effect that runs as close as possible to the original designer perfumes that lie outside of their financial reach. Indeed, traditional distilled attars and ruhs are rather unpopular among young Indians, because they are viewed as old-fashioned, heavy, or too ‘Indian-smelling’.
Some real talk, though. The higher the price for any attar or mukhallat, the better the raw ingredients are likely to be. There is a much higher correlation between price and quality in attar and mukhallat perfumery than in Western commercial perfumery. The further we climb past a certain price point – say a hundred dollars per tola – the more likely it is that the oud or rose or jasmine or ambergris featured in the perfume will be real. And as the price climbs, so too does the quantity of the expensive raw material used in the blend.
Given the extraordinary cost of raw materials such as pure jasmine oil, oud, or ambergris, this is just common sense. A ‘pure sandal’ attar costing ten dollars for three milliliters will not be real Indian sandalwood, but rather a mix of modern sandalwood replacer synthetics such as Ebanol or Javanol blended with a non-Santalum album oil. But the sandalwood used in a sample of mitti attar that costs approximately twenty-five dollars for one millimeter is assuredly real sandalwood from the Mysore region of India.
Some high-end attars, mukhallats, and CPOs are all-natural, and some are mixed media. Sometimes, there is no way of telling. One possible indicator is the ‘perfumey-ness’ of an oil. The more perfumey an oil is, the more likely it is that synthetic materials have been used to achieve lift or volume, or an abstract quality. Often there will be a trace of something to round out a blend, lend a tactile quality (muskiness, smokiness, etc.). Either way, the only impact the use of synthetics should have on your personal wearing experience is how expertly (or otherwise) they have been used in the overall blend.
Beware the masking power of exoticism. Western consumers tend to regard anything Arabian-looking as ‘exotic’ and therefore intrinsically superior to anything we can buy locally. But there is as much cheap, shoddily-made crap on the Arabian perfume oil market as there is on the shelves of your local department store. The more you smell, the more you know. In the meantime, try to resist being blinded by the romance of those dinky, gold-topped tola bottles or anything in Arabic script. ‘Exoticism’, or perceived exoticism, is not in and of itself a meaningful harbinger of quality.
Lastly, a word to the wise on the issue of market segmentation. Most big Indian and Emirati perfume companies segment their market by income and social class, and then make perfumes to cater to each of those segments, as happy to make perfume oils for the lowly clerk as for Sheikhs. Therefore, it is not unusual to find something as beautiful and costly as Ajmal’s Mukhallat Dehn al Oud Moattaq – priced at three hundred dollars for seventeen millimeters – rubbing shoulders with the same company’s Al Wisal, a trashy synthetic rose oud you can pick up for twenty dollars. Arabian Oud, Abdul Samad al Qurashi, Ajmal, Al Haramain, Rasasi et al produce a broad range of perfume oils to suit every pocketbook and social class. Buy what you can afford and use price (as well as this Attar Guide) to help you find your comfort level.
Naturally, a bit of common sense is called for too. Don’t expect, for example, an oud-based oil in the lower brackets of a company’s catalogue to contain much in the way of real oud. Due to its rarity and cost, it is just not financially feasible to use real oud in a perfume that costs thirty dollars. However, an oud mukhallat in the higher-priced ranges of a company’s catalogue, costing upwards of a hundred dollars per tola, will contain a quantity of the real thing.
A few companies avoid this ‘all sizes catered to’ strategy, choosing instead to throw their weight at one single market segment. This includes Amouage, the prestigious Omani firm that focuses on a Westernized luxury segment of the market to the exclusion of all else, and, at the other end of the scale, Surrati, which seems to have entirely thrown its lot in with the cheap dupes and generic perfume oil ‘types’. In the American indie perfume oil sector, brands are all gunning for the same customer segment, which is mostly price-inflexible young women with an anti-mainstream bent, who are generally unwilling to pay over forty dollars for a five milliliter bottle of oil.
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.
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.
[i] An exception to this ‘no bad child’ rule might be Norlimbanol, a brutal woody synthetic that smells like eggy farts trapped in a rubber glove. This one should have been drowned at birth.
Alright, before we get into the fun stuff, let’s get the practicalities out of the way. Certain questions and concerns consistently pop up when people start getting into oil-based perfumes, such as:
How much oil should I be applying?
Where do I buy attars?
How can I be sure that I am getting the real stuff, as opposed to something that will burn a hole in my wallet and maybe even my skin?
Will my attar project as strongly as a spray perfume?
Why are some oils sold in tolas and others in grams?
How will I know if something is good or not?
What do I do with the stuff that I don’t like?
Let’s answer some of that in this section.
Sizing & Packaging
Many attars and mukhallats are sold and marketed as loose oils, which means that they are packaged in generic glass tola bottles with a plastic wand for application. A non-loose oil is an oil packaged in an elaborate and rather blingy-looking bottle with a metal wand built into the cap (see examples of what I mean below).
Photo of loose oil in generic tola bottle by Asif Akbar from FreeImagesPhoto of non-loose oil, borrowed from the Ajmal website
Most of the bigger oil companies sell oils in units known as tolas. A tola is an ancient Indian unit of measurement for oils that works out to 11.6638 grams, although most sellers round this up to twelve milliliters. In the attar and oud community, people commonly buy oils in the following quantities: one tola, a half tola, and a quarter tola. This works out at 2.916 grams per quarter tola, and 0.972 grams per what we normally understand to be a one milliliter vial.
Most oud and attar artisans, on the other hand, sell strictly according to the exact number of grams. As a rule of thumb, small batch guys sell their oils by weight while the bigger oil companies sell by volume. Selling by weight is more accurate. Expect, therefore, to see grams used as the unit of measurement on the websites of the small-batch artisans like Rising Phoenix Perfumery and Ensar Oud, and millimetersor tola measurements on the websites of everyone else from Ajmal to Rasasi.
In the indie perfume world, perfume oils come packaged in five milliliter bottles (with wand caps) or roll-ons. Larger sizes are sometimes available. In the world of concentrated perfume oils (CPOs), it really depends on the market segment. For example, the oils sold by Nemat, Al Rehab, and Auric Oils in drugstores and health food stores are usually in eight milliliter roller balls. In the luxury niche segment of oil perfumery, populated by brands such as Clive Christian, Aroma M, and Nabucco, the oils are packaged in very nice bottles, which usually contain no less than ten to fifteen milliliters per bottle.
Application: How to wear oil-based perfumes?
For attars, oud oils, and mukhallats: Remove the metal cap or top, and ease the plastic wand cap out of the tight bottle neck, making sure to slide the wand applicator against the inside of the bottle to remove excess oil and prevent drips. Then, swipe the wand applicator gently on the skin on your hands, behind the ears, arms, and generally wherever you want to be scented.
For CPOs and roll-ons: Unscrew the top, and either roll onto the skin (if it is a roll-on) or place a clean fingertip over the neck of the small bottle, covering the opening completely, and tip it sideways to a slight angle to allow the oil to wash over the pad of your fingertip. Remove your finger from the bottle, and then apply the oil residue to your skin.
Oils can differ tremendously in strength and concentration, but in general, remember that these are concentrated perfume oils and need to be applied very conservatively. In other words, err on the side of caution. Start with one small dab and work up from there. If people can smell you several rooms over, you’ve gone too far! (Unless you want everyone to smell you coming, in which case, keep going).
If you are male and have a beard (or even you are female and have one), an alternative way of wearing oil-base perfume is to apply a small dot to the hair and rub gently to disperse. One can also rub a dab of oil into the tips of hair or along the collars of clothes and coats, with a careful eye on the potential for staining.
Although some oud oils and attars are incredibly strong, do not expect the same sort of projection you would get with an alcohol-based spray. In general, oils wear close to the body. Longevity, on the other hand, is usually excellent, with some oils lasting for days. Attars and mukhallats tend to be far richer in body than traditional spray perfumes.
Attars and mukhallats evolve differently to Western perfumes, which tend to unfold in a top-down fashion, with the fresher, more volatile topnotes burning away to reveal a heart (where the florals, spices, and aromatics hang out) before finishing up in a fudge of heavier basenote materials such as sandalwood, musk, or resins. In contrast, attars do not usually have topnotes, instead heading straight for a heart-base accord that radiates outwards like the glow from a fire. Imagine concentric, overlapping circles rather than a pyramid and you have the right idea.
Buyer beware – traditional Indian attars and ruhs are costly and difficult to track down, with authenticity a serious concern. For honest-to-goodness attars that have been distilled in the proper manner, stick to well-known suppliers of essential oils and perfumery materials. In the United States, reputable suppliers include John Steele, Enfleurage NYC, and Eden Botanicals. The sandalwood oil sampler ($58) offered by Eden Botanicals, for example, is an excellent way to educate your nose about the very different scent profiles of the different species of sandalwood that you are likely to encounter in attar perfumery. A reputable supplier in India is M. L. Ramnarain Perfumers, a family-owned business in Kannauj that still distills attars and ruhs in the traditional Indian manner (this company supplies raw materials and attars to perfumers, brands, and individuals worldwide).
No discussion of attars can take place without mentioning the huge role played by White Lotus Aromatics and Tiger Flag. Both outfits sourced, produced, and sold a wide range of high quality traditional Indian attars and ruhs, such as ruh khus, mitti, kandam, majmua, and so on. In particular, Chris McMahon of White Lotus Aromatics has spent most of his career educating people about the processes involved in attar making and essential oil production, visiting the raw materials producers in the field and then writing many detailed articles and blog posts about their work. Unfortunately, both have since shuttered their doors. They are much missed by perfumers, attar enthusiasts, and the fragrance community at large.
In America, Enfleurage, a NY-based company specialized in the distillation and sourcing of the most sublime essential oils from around the world, should be your go-to for sniffing the essential oils that go into attars. In Europe, a reputable provider is Aromata Mirabilis, based in Lithuania. None of the attars or oils from these sources are inexpensive but you may be assured of their quality and purity.
If, however, you are just looking for a quick snapshot of traditional Indian attars and ruhs, then eBay is a reasonably good source. I have found decent examples of ruh khus, majmua, shamama, genda, nargis, mogra (motia), darbar, and ruh gulab on eBay, and although I would not testify in court to their purity, most gave me a rough idea of what they were supposed to smell like.
eBay is also a good source for quarter tola samples of popular mukhallats from the big name brands such as Ajmal, Abdul Samad Al Qurashi, Al Haramain, and Rasasi. Some sellers even offer one milliliter sizes. In fact, for any seller offering a large selection of oils, it is always worth writing a note to the seller to enquire as to the possibility of buying one milliliter samples, especially if you intend on sampling broadly from among their wares. The worst they can do is say no, and if they say yes, then you get to sample widely without incurring too much of a financial loss.
Distributor-retailer websites, such as Al Rashad in the United States, Oudh.co.uk in Britain, and Oriental Style.de in Europe offer a wide selection of attars and sample sizes, with prices roughly comparable to eBay. Service from these sites is very good, with the owners happy to suggest other attars based on your taste.
Another way to sample is to go through a large distributor company, such as Zahra’s, which stocks a huge selection of attars and mukhallats from many of the big-name brands. The advantage of this is that you can simply give the folks at Zahra’s a list of what you want to sample, and they will send you one milliliter samples of each, without you having to jump from supplier to supplier to access the stuff you are interested in. Also, it often works out cheaper per milliliter than going through European or American sources. The downside to Zahra’s is that shipping is slow (four to six weeks) because the company is based in the Middle East, and there are mixed reviews on reliability. I have not personally shopped there, but plenty of people are happy with the service and if you are of the adventurous type, then you might want to go this route.
Of course, there is also the option of visiting a company’s website or physical store location. Arabian Oud, for example, has wonderful store locations in both New York and London, and the staff are delightful. An advantage to showing up in person is that they may show you rare attars and ouds that are not available in their online catalogue. (Whether you are in the position to afford them is another matter entirely).
Be aware that the brands’ own websites tend to be a mixed bag, varying wildly in terms of language accessibility, buying options, and shipping costs. Do your homework first. Also, if you are doing a bit of sneaky browsing at work, remember to mute your computer’s speakerphone, as many of these websites blast loud Arabic music or run videos automatically on Flash like it is 2002 all over again.
In the United States, I highly recommend The World in Scents, a Princeton-run family business that used to specialize in the sale of high-end Abdul Samad Al Qurashi attars and oud mukhallats, Agar Aura pure oud oils, and some of the Rising Phoenix Perfumery oils. A couple of years ago, TWIS phased out its branded stock in favor of its own line of perfumes, but it is worth contacting Mark, the owner, to ask about his back stock. I expect TWIS to continue to sell off its branded oils over the next few years.
During special celebration periods on the Muslim calendar such as Eid and Bayram, most brands and websites will run special offers, often reducing prices by up to fifty percent, so plan ahead and shop wisely if you intend to buy a full size of anything expensive.
If you are interested in the work of Sultan Pasha, then know that he offers samplers of his work on his website, Sultan Pasha Attars. Currently, a 29-piece attar sampler is offered at £75 (pre-order only). He used to sell a magnificent eighty-attar sampler of a broad range of attars from houses such as Amouage (including all the discontinued attars), Ajmal, Al Haramain, and Abdul Samad Al Qurashi. However, it appears as if this option is no longer available. Keep checking the website, though, as this might change in the future.
For pure oud oils and oud wood chips, my advice is to buy directly from the artisans themselves, all of whom have professional, well-run websites and top-notch customer service. Ensar Oud, Imperial Oud, Feel Oud, Al Shareef Oudh, the Rising Phoenix Perfumery, and Agar Aura are all names you can trust.
Most of the artisan oud and attar producers have sample packs of oils for sale on their sites. These are curated to enable the customer to get a taste of the range of styles on offer. For example, Ensar Oud sells an oud legends sampler set ($750) that contains a curated selection of pure oud oils from a diverse range of regions and style profiles, each vial containing 0.15 grams of oil. The Rising Phoenix Perfumery sells a sandalwood sampler set for around €138 (the set contains 8 gram samples of Mysore, Tamil Nadu, and Papua New Guinea sandalwood oils). Expensive? You bet. With some of these sampler sets, you will be eating ramen for a month. But for someone beginning their journey into the world of oud or sandalwood, these vials of liquid contain an entire education for the nose. It is like staring tearfully at a complicated puzzle for hours and someone finally handing you the one piece that makes sense of it all. If you have the means to calibrate your nose with a fantastic baseline, then do it. Because it will inform and guide your every choice after that.
For a wide range of oud, musk, and ambergris mukhallats, you can also try Agarscents Bazaar – they sell a wide selection of samples for you to try before you buy. This company has both a brand website and an Etsy page. Do the perfumes feature genuine oud, musk, or ambergris? Personally, I suspect not (or at least not in anything more than holistic amounts). But if you can suspend disbelief for a while, then there are some true gems in the Agarscents Bazaar stable.
In the category of concentrated perfume oils (CPOs), ease of sampling depends greatly on the segment you are interested in exploring. It is tremendously easy, for example, to sample the wares of the American perfume oil brands, because they all sell samples, either individually or in sets, on their websites or Etsy storefronts.
Solstice Scents, for example, sells a set of five samples for $17.50, or ten samples for $35. BPAL sells sets of samples (called Imp’s Ears) curated according to theme (gourmand, witchy, churchy, gothic, floral, etc.). They also sell individual samples, should you know what appeals to you out of the 67,000 perfume oils they seem to stock. However, COVID-19 seems to have put a halt to the gallop of some indie oil perfume brands – many of these were out of stock at the time of publication. Hopefully, things will begin to return to normal soon, so keep an eye out for these sampler sets. They are terrific value and provide a low-risk means of dipping your toes into their bewilderingly huge back catalogues. Solstice Scents in particular is worth the squeeze.
For international customers, and for certain brands, like Arcana, however, it appears to be easier (and less pricey on the shipping front) to shop for these oils on retail sites rather than through the brand website itself. Sites such as Femme Fatale out of Australia, Pretty Indulgent in Canada, and Nui Cobalt in the USall provide excellent service. (Just keep in mind that these sites sell full bottles only, not samples).
Sampling the pricier, more upmarket niche oils takes some patience and homework. Aroma M, Ava Luxe, and Olivine are good examples of American niche oil perfume brands that know what the American customer expects, and therefore offers well-priced, accessible sampling options. For example, Aroma M sells a set of eleven perfume oils for $40, and Olivine a set of eight samples for $45. Although Ava Luxe does not sell samples of her oil-based perfumes, you can sample the EDPs for ten dollars a pop, and then buy the oil version later if you like (her oil perfumes are priced at $40 for five milters).
Moving further up the food chain, we have luxury and niche brands such as Bruno Acampora, Le Labo, Clive Christian, Strangelove NYC, Andy Tauer, and so on, who offer, or have offered in the past, perfumes in oil format – and this is where sampling becomes a little more difficult. While Bruno Acampora does provide a sampling option (sample sets are €49 per set) on the brand website, for the others, it is best either to check the brand website for special deals, or indeed, skip the brand altogether and buy a sample from one of the brand’s official retailers, like Luckyscent, First in Fragrance, Essenza Nobile, Alla Violetta, Skins NL, and other sites. Keep in mind that sampling in this segment can be as expensive as high-end attars. A 0.3ml sample of Bruno Acampora Gold Musc costs $10 at Luckyscent, for example.
What to do with oils that don’t work out
Naturally, not everything you sample will be a success. And when you don’t love an oil, even one milliliter of it can seem like an awful lot. The first port of call for offloading unloved oils should be, of course, trying to sell them on the secondary market. Some of the artisanal oud oils hold their value or even increase on the re-sale market, as do some of the rarer, discontinued attars like the Amouage oils or a brand stand-out, like Areej Le Doré’s Russian Musk or Ajmal’s Mukhallat Dahn al Oudh Moattaq.
Unfortunately, though, it is difficult to sell any oils that do not fall into this narrow bracket, for largely the same reason why secondhand underwear never does well in thrift stores, i.e., no matter how much scrubbing and sterilization is done, nothing can erase the thought of a stranger’s skin cells on such an intimate article. The higher the ick factor, the lower the resale factor.
Swapping is a possibility, although the same hygiene issues apply. If you are lucky enough to belong to a forum or online community of fellow enthusiasts, then your potential pool of swapees might be big enough to make it work. The advantage to swapping within a closed circle of enthusiasts is that hygiene is a non-issue. Keep in mind, though, that swap negotiations for oils can be exhausting because of the difficulty of establishing like-for-like values and because attar enthusiasts have annoyingly specific swap parameters.
Alternatively, you could always MacGyver rejects into what they call air care in the fragrance industry, meaning candles, air fresheners, room sprays, aroma diffusers, and reed diffusers. Rub the oil on an unlit, unscented beeswax candle, for example, and when the candle is lit, it will carry the scent into the room as the upper layer of wax liquefies. Empty whole vials of attars into the top of a simple oil burner, adding a few drops of water, and light a tea light underneath. Add a few drops to an aroma diffuser in the place of the same-brand essential oils they always tell you to use, and voilà, instant aura. You can also impregnate a piece of cloth or tissue with oil and rub it gently over (unlit) light bulbs and the tops of radiators – once turned on, the heat will cause the scent to diffuse throughout the entire room. You might even discover that you enjoy the oil much more when smelled on the air than on your skin.
Another idea is to turn your mistakes into something you can use for personal care, such as body oils, hair serums, bath oils, and so on. My husband’s favorite beard oil is an ever-changing concoction that I make for him by mixing unloved perfume oils, attars, and mukhallats into a quantity of high quality neutral oils such as jojoba or almond oil. Blend attars into Argan oil using a rough one-to-nine ratio, and voilà, you have an exquisitely scented hair or beard oil that would probably cost you forty dollars from a posh spa brand.
Oh, and if all else fails, there is always altruism! Gift oils you are no longer enjoying to loved ones, family members, friends, the postman – anyone you might think would be interested. Buy those little red or black velvet pouches with the drawstrings from Alibaba in bulk for anything between five and twenty cents apiece, and you have the perfect stocking filler or little birthday present ready to go. In my experience, there is not a person alive who is not thrilled to receive a little velvet baggie of perfume oils as a gift. Even if they chuck them in the bin later on, you will be positively bathed in the glow of good karma.
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.
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!
The longer form of that question being: why wear an attar or oil-based perfume at all when there are plenty of perfectly good spray perfumes out there?
Actually, there are several reasons.
One reason some people prefer attars to spray perfumes is because their religion prohibits the consumption of alcohol, and attars do not contain alcohol. There are several schools of thought in Islam regarding the use of alcohol in products such as perfume, but the dominant one believes very strongly that it is haram (forbidden).
Most religious figures in the Islamic world advise that alcohol-based perfume should be avoided at all costs unless one needs to cauterize a wound with it[i]. This is, by the way, the only circumstance under which Dior Sauvage should ever be applied to one’s skin.
Many Muslims are passionate consumers of perfume, deriving encouragement from key passages in the Qur’an itself. One such passage refers to Mohammed as being a fan of perfume: ‘The Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) liked aromatic things and perfume, he used them himself and recommended their use to others. On waking up he would relieve himself, perform Wudhu, and apply fragrance on his clothing. If fragrance was presented to him, he would never refuse it. He would use perfume at night too, especially on Fridays for Jumu’ah prayers.’[ii]
Another passage exhorts good Muslims to spend money on attars: ‘Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) used to say that, ‘Whoever spends a third of his wealth on ‘Itr is not being extravagant.’ (A prime case of enabling if I ever saw one).
Another reason to wear attars or oil-based perfume is culture, which, of course, is the natural extension of religion in many parts of the world. Attar distillation is first and foremost an Indian art. Unearthed clay pots belonging to the Harappan civilization suggest that distillation had already begun during the Indus Valley era[iii], but it seems to have only truly flourished as a boundary-crossing art form when the Persiatic Mughal dynasty that ruled out of India for several generations used patronage and their knowledge of techniques outside of India’s boundaries to scale up local attar perfumery and flower-growing. Even after the decline of the Mughal Empire, however, the use of attars and oils remained important in Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism throughout India.
In India, attars are used for ayurvedic reasons, as well as for cultural events such as weddings. Their use of the fantastic range of native plants, herbs, spices, flowers, and woods on offer throughout India is a way of honoring Mother India and an important connection to a shared cultural heritage.
In Arabian, Turkish, and Persian cultures, attars are used for prayer, with the robes of the Imam and the faithful richly anointed with rose and oud mukhallats. But perfume occupies a much wider role in Arabian, Turkish, and Persian society at large, where both men and women adore rich attars and fragrances. Arabs traditionally keep a tray of attars with which to welcome guests into their homes and to pass around after dinner. They also fumigate their robes, hair, beards, and homes with precious incense materials such as oud wood, frankincense, and boukhour (mixed resinous materials), which they burn slowly on burners known as mabkhara.
Another excellent reason to wear attars is that they are the last hold-out – beyond all-natural perfumery – for abundant use of exquisite raw materials such as real jasmine oil, oud oil, ambergris, and rose. Whereas synthetics such as Black Agar, Hedione, and Ambroxan have largely replaced natural oud oil, jasmine, and ambergris respectively in Western commercial perfumery, you can be reasonably sure to find the real stuff in attars and mukhallats (beyond a certain price point). Furthermore, attars and mukhallats make generous use of these materials.
Attars exalt the most exquisite raw materials known to man. There is something to be said for the simple but powerful beauty born out of gathering two or three incredible materials such as oud, rose, and sandalwood, and letting them work their synergistic magic on your skin. Attars are, in general, far simpler in construction than spray perfumes. But when that simple structure is adorned with the most magical-smelling, boundary-shifting essential oils, then who needs more?
Many people get into attars because they are drawn to a fantasy of Eastern exoticism, a tug on the collective imagination exerted by colorful visions of veils, palaces, and stories from the lips of Scheherazade herself. Now this is problematic. Although Westerners generally intend the word ‘oriental’ to be complementary – an irresistible counter-weight to what we believe to be the comparative drabness of life in the West – we have allowed the idea of the ‘Orient’ to take root in our imagination without stopping to investigate either its basis or the harm it can do.
Indeed, though much used in the marketing and discussion of perfume, there is mounting scrutiny over use of the word ‘oriental’. First, its value as a descriptor is pretty weak. Oriental means eastern, but east of what, exactly? How can India, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and China – vastly different geographies, cultures, and peoples – all be grouped under the word ‘oriental’ from a perfume point of view? Short answer: they can’t.
Second, the word ‘oriental’ can be enormously Othering to the people whose resources and cultural identity have been purloined by countries who have either colonized Asian, Middle Eastern, or African territories in the past or benefited from their colonization. Surprisingly, there has been quite a bit of pushback in the fragrance community over retiring the O word. But if even one person in Asia or Africa or the Middle East finds the word hurtful, then there can be no justification for continuing to use it. History will judge us harshly if we stray on the wrong side of arguments like this. In the Attar Guide, therefore, there will be a section on ambers, resins, and balsams – not on the so-called category of ‘oriental’ perfumes[iv].
Regardless of nomenclature, however, given that Westerners have little to no cultural experience of the strong, animalic aromas of oud oil, musk, and ambergris, encountering these materials for the first time is thrilling. For some, it will prove to be an emotional or spiritual awakening from which there is no return.
But even if the ‘Closer to Nature, Closer to God/Shiva/Allah’ argument for wearing attars and ouds does not apply to other segments of the oil perfume sector – dupes, for example, but also indie perfume oils, roll-ons, luxury niche perfume oils and so on – there are still many reasons why a customer might prefer to buy an oil-based perfume over a traditional, alcohol-based one.
Fans of American indie perfume oils, for example, choose oils as part of a general anti-mainstream lifestyle choice that rejects the marketing guff and big corporate budgets of conglomerates such as L’Oréal or Estée Lauder. Indie oils are hugely imagination and fantasy-driven, catering to highly individualistic desires not met in mainstream perfumery.
Many people also value oil versions of their favorite scents to wear perfume in a quieter, more subtle way. The oil versions of the Le Labo, Fragrance du Bois, and April Aromatics scents, for example, are all subdued versions of their eau de parfum counterparts, thus the perfect choice for yoga, meditation, the office, and those pesky visits to the dentist.
The oil format also brings more prosaic benefits for brands. Oil is a cost-effective carrier, less irritating to the skin than alcohol, and, importantly, can be shipped internationally without setting off any Hazmat alarms. In recent years, for example, small American indies such as Dame Perfumery and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Perfumes have introduced oil-based formats of their most famous perfumes, allowing them to access markets such as Europe and Asia, heretofore off limits due to the cost and hassle of shipping alcohol-based perfumes outside of America.
Many people prefer to wear oil-based perfumes because of the sensual, tactile nature of wearing an oil. Notions of luxury and self-care are attached to oil-based perfumes, a feature often emphasized by high-end niche brands. The artistic director of Henry Jacques, Christophe Tollemer, for example, explained the appeal of oil-based perfumery as follows: ‘It is personal, emotional, and almost as if you’re protecting yourself in a bubble. It is sensual, seductive and elegant.’[v]
Oils also play into the modern consumer’s desire for customization, a crucial factor for the indie segments of the market that believes strongly in skin chemistry. Attars need body warmth and movement to activate the scent molecules. In a world of mass production and product homogeneity, the idea that your perfume is an entirely personal mix of raw materials, body heat, and skin chemistry exerts an irresistible tug.
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.
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!
Are you mystified by mukhallats, confused by concentrated perfume oils, anxious about attars, open-mouthed at oud, and dithering on dupes? You are not alone. The world of oil perfumery spans a vast territory from the squidge of artisanal oud that will set you back a month’s rent to the Kuumba Made roll-on you lob into your cart with the toilet paper.
I have written this Attar Guide to help you make sense of it all. Over the next few weeks (or months), I’ll be uploading chapters of the Guide right here on Takeonethingoff, starting with a primer on attars, ruhs, mukhallats, and concentrated perfume oils, and seguing into actual reviews. Stick with me, and by the end, you will be able to buy oils with confidence, secure in the knowledge that you know what goes into making them and why they cost what they do. You will be a smarter, tougher consumer, able to look past the flashy exoticism of those little gold-capped tola bottles and spot the true gems.
The Guide sets out to do two things. Its first purpose is educational. Not all oils were created equal, and this will give you the tools you need to tell the difference. I want you to saunter into the marketplace with the confidence that comes from knowing why one perfume costs thirty-five dollars per millimeter and another only two.
The second purpose of the Guide is critical. By this, I mean in-depth reviews of a cross-section of oils offered by brands active in each segment of the market, with the aim of sorting out, for you (the reader), the good from the bad, and the sublime from the ridiculous. I am going to blow open the doors to the often mysterious and ill-lit world of oil-based perfumery, and answer the question that rarely gets answered to my satisfaction, which is: what does it actually smell like?
The Attar Guide is by no means exhaustive. Seven hundred (give or take) oil-based perfumes is a decent sample size, but still just the tip of the iceberg. Turnover in the oil-based perfume world is intense – what takes your fancy today might not be available to buy tomorrow. Treat this Guide as you would a dog-eared copy of the Lonely Plant Guide you find on a bus seat. It still identifies – in broad strokes – the top two or three places in a country worth visiting but features information that was going stale even while the ink was drying.
However, for someone who is interested in oil-based perfumes, this Guide could prove very useful indeed. The genre is so bewilderingly huge that anything that points you in one direction or the other is welcome. After all, whether you are already knee-deep in the oil-based perfume world, or just starting out, then you will already have discovered just how expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating a journey it can be.
First, the cost of entry is high. Samples of attars are not as widely available as designer scents and even the smallest size bottle (quarter of a tola or roughly three milliliters) can run into the hundreds of dollars, especially if oud or ambergris is involved. A quarter gram sample of pure artisanal oud can cost up to forty dollars, and even then, you are relying on the vendor’s description to figure out whether you will like it or not. At this level of investment, trying to find something that will be exactly to your taste is fraught with danger.
Sampling within the indie perfume oil world is much easier, not to mention cheaper. This is because the indie oil scene is dominated by companies in North America, a culture where sampling is regarded as a democratic birthright, in comparison to Europe, where Sales Assistants seem to have always ‘just run out’ the moment you ask. Americans simply expect that reasonably-priced samples are provided as part of the ‘try before you buy’ portion of the sales funnel. (We would be foaming at the mouth with jealousy were it not for fact that we’ve seen what their healthcare system entails).
Second, exploration of attar perfumery can be difficult because there is often a dearth of information on what these oils actually smell like. The official notes published by most of the big houses like Abdul Samad Al Qurashi and Ajmal are vague, incomplete, or just plain wrong. In the American indie perfume oil world, we have the opposite problem. Purple-prosed product descriptions running to half a page are not uncommon, as well as notes lists so comprehensive that one suspects they contain the actual formula. While the sparse descriptions for Arabian attars leave the buyer grasping at straws, the descriptions in the indie perfume oil sector give too much information, creating unrealistic expectations in the mind of the buyer as to how the perfume will actually smell.
The exception to the problem of too much or too little product information is the artisanal oil niche. In recent years, there has been a significant upsurge in the number of artisanal attars hitting the market. Largely ushered in by the market-storming popularity of distill-it-yourself brands like Ensar Oud, Bortnikoff, and Areej Le Doré, these attars have attained the exclusivity and cachet formerly only associated with luxury brands such as Roja Dove and Clive Christian. Perhaps sensing a small but noticeable shift in luxury or high-net-worth consumer interest in oil-based perfumes, many luxury and high-end indie brands, from Xerjoff and Clive Christian to Auphorie, now have their own lines of attars.
Because it attracts mostly genuine fragrance connoisseurs, attars in this segment of the market tend to be very well reviewed and described. The 313-page (and counting) Basenotes thread on Areej Le Dore is proof of this, as are the wonderfully detailed reviews and interviews with attar and oud artisans on blogs such as Kafkaesque and Persolaise. However, for most everything falling to the left or the right of this narrow niche, you are largely at the mercy of fulsome marketing copy or the odd mention on an Internet forum (such as the Oudh Ud Aoud Oud Agarwood thread on Basenotes. or the Ouddict forums).
Of course, blind buying is exciting. Nothing tops the thrill of stumbling over an oil that makes the heart beat a little faster. As in any situation where you cannot easily test the product or even find out very much about it in advance, the only benchmark turns out to be the question ‘Do I like this?’ But for the risk-averse or those who do not have a bottomless well of money to gamble away, well, that risk is a serious barrier.
For many, these are hurdles not worth jumping over and the interest stops there. After all, if you are about to spend several hundred dollars or a thousand dollars on an unknown oil, then you want as much information about it before whipping out your credit card. One wouldn’t invest in a horse or a husband before inspecting its undercarriage, and the same due diligence applies here. Too often, the simple question, ‘What does it smell like?’ is not answered to my satisfaction. I assume it is the same for you. And that is why I have written this Guide.
Acknowledgements
The Attar Guide has been ‘under development’ for roughly six year now, but, as with most efforts like this, it has not happened in a vacuum. Over the years, I have had the immense good fortune of learning from true experts in the field.
First of all, any guide or book on fragrance owes a great debt of gratitude to the work of LucaTurin and Tania Sanchez, the parents of modern fragrance criticism. Their books both popularized and legitimized the notion of fragrance criticism, elevating it beyond the sphere of influence traditionally dominated by glossy magazine editors and salespeople. Beyond this, Luca Turin has been a wonderfully supportive, kind, and only occasionally bitchy friend to me over the years.
Then there are the experts in raw materials. I have been fortunate to learn at the knee of Mandy Aftel, the mother of natural perfumery, as well as Christopher McMahon of (the now sadly closed) White Lotus Aromatics and Trygve Harris of Enfleurage – people with inarguably the most first-hand experience of essential oil production in the world. Their books, writings, interviews, and explorations have been instrumental to me in understanding how raw materials are produced and how they behave in compositions. Michelle Krell Kyd of Glasspetalsmoke, a well-respected educator who uses natural science to explain olfaction, has also been a fantastic source of learning for me and many others. If you are lucky enough to live in Michigan, please sign up to one of her Smell and Tell, or Taste and Tell workshops.
I would like to thank Grant Osborne of Basenotes for not only inviting me to author several articles and interviews for Basenotes over the years, but for just being good people in general. Always kind, supportive, and fair-minded, Grant is tireless in his dedication to making Basenotes a welcoming home for fragrance enthusiasts. The length of my articles recently forced him to adjust the code for how long an article can be on Basenotes, which is something I’m inordinately proud of.
Other friends are Franco Wright of Luckyscent and Sjorn Plitzko of Essenza Nobile who have not only employed me as a writer over the years, but generously supplied me with friendship, advice, samples of oil-based perfumes, and valuable insight into the commercial side of the perfume world. Speaking of Franco, the late, great Jtd (Connor McTeague) was the person who introduced us. Connor was the best writer I have had the pleasure of knowing and I miss him sharply. (I am not sure that it is correct to say ‘sharply’ here but that is how it feels).
On Instagram, the place to which much of today’s fragrance discussion has moved, I would also like to draw attention to the efforts of perfumer-slash-activist Christophe Laudamiel, Pranjal Kapoor (one of the key distillers of raw materials and attars in India, supplying perfumers and fragrance brands), and Scent Festival, an account run by Yosh Han, to raise awareness of cultural, social, and equity costs connected to the production of raw materials. Together, they are working to dispel some of the smoke and mirrors around perfumery. It is often eye-opening stuff.
My heartfelt thanks go to the countless individual artisans like Ensar Oud, Russian Adam, J.K. DeLapp, Taha Syed, Ws of Kyara Zen, Dominique Dubrana of Abdes Salaam Attar, Abdullah of Mellifluence, Sultan Pasha, and the folks at Al Shareef Oudh and Imperial Oud, who have all spent considerable amounts of time and money in educating my humble nose. Many of these artisans sweat it out in some of the world’s most inhospitable places to produce exquisite raw materials. The very act of making attars, mukhallats, or pure oud oils is an expensive, messy, and all-consuming. That some of this labor of love has made it onto my skin is something for which I will never not be grateful.
Finally, though I was unable to convince any publisher that a book on oil-based perfumery could be marketable to anyone beyond a tiny band of people inside an already narrow niche, I am immensely grateful for the support and advice shared with me by Dominique Brunel and Jeanne Doré of Nez, La Revue Olfactive, the most important and prestigious publication on perfumery and raw materials today, and Barbara Herman, author of the wonderful book ‘Scent and Subversion’ (as well as founder of Eris Parfums). What I’ve learned is that publishing is a tough sell, unless you already have a platform, a name to trade on, or a quantifiable market that you know will buy your book. Since I lack most of those things, I have made the decision to put the Guide out there myself, on the one platform I do have, which is Takeonethingoff. I figure that I owe it to all the wonderful people who have given their own time and resources to help me write this Guide, as well as to anybody who is searching for attar-specific content and not finding it elsewhere.
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.
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!
I have yet to come across a review that captures what Le Labo Iris 39 smells like to me, so I’m going to take a run at it myself. Despite the advertised violets and iris, Iris 39 doesn’t smell sunlit, or powdery, or even floral in the traditional sense. To me, it smells utterly abstract, a nigh-on impenetrable wedge of industrial cement and toner ink mixed with mud-caked flower bulbs, fuzzed up at the edges with a carbolic soap (patchouli-musk) accord that wears on you like a rain-soaked wool sweater.
I’ve noticed that the earlier Le Labo perfumes – Patchouli 24, Oud 27, Santal 33, Iris 39 – all feature this interesting tension between something natural-smelling and something ‘pleasantly chemical’, i.e., the vaporous head-spin of industrial materials like hot glue, ink, magazine paper, or burning rubber. Perhaps this is what makes these perfumes so distinctive. Later Le Labo output (The Noir 29, Tonka 25, Another 13) shoot for the same complexity but lean too hard on harsh woody ambers, Ambroxan, etc., thereby landing on the ‘bad chemical’ mat rather than the ‘good chemical’ one. You know what I mean, right? A good chemical smell to me is the honest honk of fresh newspaper ink or spilled petrol or the school supply closet. A million miles away from those powerful woody ambers like Amber Extreme or Norlimbanol that are (over) used in perfumery these days to make a scent enormously radiant or long-lasting.
So there you have it. Part of Iris 39 that makes me feel like a hippy who’s spent the afternoon planting out tubers in a wet garden, while the other makes me feel like I’m getting a semi-high from hanging around the office printer while they’re changing the cartridges. Mostly, though, I think it’s just one of those thick, murky ‘soups’ of a perfume that are vaguely resistant to analysis, like Mitsouko (Guerlain) or Kintsugi (Masque Milano) – perfumes that are simultaneously harsh and organic. Wearing Iris 39 gives me a physical jolt akin to being so hungry for the first bite of something that, even before it’s fully tasted, your mouth waters so suddenly it’s almost painful.
Source of sample: Various samples, decants, and finally a full bottle, all of which I purchased myself.
Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez have an extraordinary turn of phrase, don’t they? One of the many things they have written that has lingered in my mind for years is their description of L’Eau d’Hiver (Frédéric Malle) as ‘an elegiac, powdery, almonds-and-water accord that takes its place next to Guerlain’s Après L’Ondée and Caron’s Farnesiana among the fragrance Ophelias of the world’ (Perfumes: The Guide, 2008), calling to mind Millais’ famous painting of the doomed Ophelia, kept afloat in a pond by flowers and tendrils of her own hair before being pulled to her ‘muddy death’. The association with the perfume is immediate – you understand, even without smelling it, that L’Eau d’Hiver is watery and delicate and even a little melancholic.
But L’Eau d’Hiver, while undoubtedly a lovely perfume, is as fragile and as milquetoast as its predecessor, Après L’Ondée, meaning that it works perfectly if you have a quiet space somewhere where you can appreciate its every nuance in slow motion, but tends to dissipate as rapidly as a mummy when exposed to the hoary breath of modern life. Both L’Eau Hiver and Après L’Ondée are a ‘bottled firefly’ type of smell that belongs more to the fairies at the bottom of a garden in Cottingley than to an irritated woman fighting her way through the crowd to get on her train to work.
Enter L’Amandière by Heeley Paris. With its boot polish lilacs, linden, hyacinths, maybe a smidge of rose, mint, and freshly cut grass, it shares the same watery translucence as L’Eau d’Hiver and Après L’Ondée, i.e., Spring incarnate, but is robust enough to stand up to modern life. It is certainly a watercolor fragrance, its soft daubs of blush pink, mint green, and duck egg blue qualifying it as one of Turin and Sanchez’ so-called ‘fragrance Ophelias’. But suffused with sturdy, air-conditioned musks and a green, unripe almond note, there is a slight thickness of body to L’Amandière that keeps it all from crumbling away into nothing.
There is also an undercurrent of sweetness in L’Amandière, but this is the faint natural sweetness you smell in crushed lilacs, green plant milk, and freshly trampled grass, rather than the sticky, all-encompassing sultriness of tonka-led takes on almond, which tend to lean towards cherry pit and marzipan. There is no fudge here, no extra weight.
Above all, L’Amandière is the perfect reflection of the Heeley house style, which is discreet, refined, and vaguely pastoral, filtered through a modernist lens that allows for clarity. And this is definitely a soft, clear perfume. Nobody else but James Heeley could have, in my opinion, produced a fridge-cold spring floral with all the watery melancholia of an Après L’Ondée or a L’Eau d’Hiver that lasts longer than a sigh in the wind while sacrificing none of the ‘fairy dust’ translucence that makes those perfumes special in the first place.
Source of sample: I bought a full bottle of L’Amandière at full retail price from ParfuMarija in Dublin, one of only two bottles of perfume I have purchased in 2021 (the other being a bottle of the reissued Nahema eau de parfum by Guerlain).
Image: John Everett Millais, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
