The latest work for
l'Artisan Parfumeur by
Bertrand Duchaufour,
Al Oudh,
is an attempt it seems to capture the authentic, traditional
personality of oud or agarwood (some of its other names are listed
here) while taming it in advance in the bottle for those who might be
weary of the power of the material or not know how to apply it with
the discretion required. At the same time this may just be a handy rationalization
to review a low-intensity oud, a condition to which the material is de
facto, it might be argued, forced by its price. It is however the combination of sotto voce
and sustained qualities here that made my perception of the scent turn into a more positive one.
There is some
discrepancy between the brand's promise of a "
dense" oud perfume and
the more attenuated quality of Al Oudh even more on paper than on skin. The rich list of notes made you anticipate a perfume nearly as thick and deep as a night in the desert with
ingredients such as date, leather, castoreum, civet, myrrh (please see full list of notes at the end of the article). You
anticipated a flight of fancy taken via the orientalist genre by perfumer
Bertrand Duchaufour. But what strikes you initially is that Al Oudh betrays a conventional bon-ton, dry, woodsy, urban, niche perfumery feel
familiar to those who wear Comme de Garçons fragrances, which makes it
feel overly coded at first; Duchaufour has in fact composed several perfumes for Comme des Garçons. It makes you suspect that oudh was
kidnapped in order to reinforce this standard-issue edgy accord and make it a
little bit more daring (insert tremolos). You think of Al Oudh as a
"hipster oud" at first.
After letting the note express itself
from beginning till the end and getting a fuller sense of the
personality of the perfume overtime, I now see it more as an accomplishment to
have managed to preserve the personality of oud intact over so many
long hours of development. Compared to other oud perfumes, it seems
that Al Oudh by L'Artisan Parfumeur claims to be both authentic-smelling and easy to wear.
The composition is not very expansive, but at the same time its
sustained quality is well-controlled and modulated coming across in the end as
remarkable.
If we take the analogy of Aesop's fable "The Tortoise and The Hare", this would be a tortoise-oud with the twist that oud is
fundamentally and by nature a stealthy black panther turned here into a slow, tenacious tortoise endowed with a focused sense of finish thanks to the
perfumer. It's here at the start and it's there at the end when other oud compositions have fallen by the wayside after offering their fireworks. This slow-burn movement is what makes it special...
Continue reading "L'Artisan Parfumeur Al Oudh (2009): Taming The Oud or a Black Panther Turned Tortoise {Perfume Review}" »
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