Review by gimmegreen
It took me a while to be won over by this one. A distraction was my earlier experience of the Robert Piguet Oud (a not entirely successful, somewhat medicated sticking plaster and plasticene creation) which seemed to have taken its cue from this perfume. A second problem was its smoothness this thing is buffered to an inch of its life, it can be difficult to get a grip on something so supremely cushioned. But over the length of a day I was impressed by its persistence and found myself enjoying it for what it was. Thus I have returned for repeat wears. In trying to do some justice to its essential nature I came up with numerous descriptors that would suggest a degree of amorphousness fog, milkiness, a mauve on mauve painting but ultimately found they were not true to the experience. So I have to settle for the rather more prosaic judgment that this perfume has presence but is unemphatic, not something many of us expect from an oud; it has plenty of volume but is resolutely not operatic. So apart from the extreme roundedness of its oud note what else maintains the equanimity? Theres a solid but muted patchouli doing the groundwork here; somewhat sweet, with plenty of backbone, but not piercing or vegetal or earthy. I think the elemi mentioned in the notes list is also an important player with its range of tones (pine-like, lemony, balsamic) half-revealed, dabs in a pointillist landscape swirling in musks. The spice is briefly peppery to begin with, but later has more of a dry wood aspect that marries perfectly with the oud it is a low murmur. A somewhat gummy sweetness that is a bit of a Kurkdjian trademark sits easily in the mix. On the scale from cool to warm, this is almost exactly in the middle, just a touch towards the warmer end. Its wearability is not in doubt and I do enjoy it; its the airbrushed smoothness that wrongfoots me. Ill leave it to those who can embrace that more readily. Funnily, more is more with this oud I found the experience went up quite a few notches when I sprayed myself a bit more liberally. Traces on my scarf smell heavenly the following day.
