A long time ago, a friend who was a painter gave me a book. I can’t tell you now what the book was about, but I remember the rich scent of his work soaked in its pages. For days, I buried my nose in the book to smell the turpentine, oil paint, and raw wood of his studio. The smell brought back the giant landscape he was working on while a cat padded over the cement floor to jump into my lap as I talked and nursed a glass of red wine. This is what I think of when I smell By Kilian Incense Oud Eau de Parfum.

Incense Oud, the third in By Kilian’s Arabian Nights series, was developed by perfumer Sidonie Lancesseur and released earlier this year. By Kilian’s website lists among its notes incense, oud, cardamom, rose, and labdanum. Probably, like many fragrances, it has something citrusy and fleeting for top notes, but I don’t smell it. And probably there’s something more complex in its body, but I don’t smell that, either.

What I do smell is a surprisingly sinuous — although definitely present — incense sweetened with sandalwood…

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Amouage describes Opus V Eau de Parfum as a “woody and floral neoclassical masterpiece.” Sure, Opus V stars a beautiful iris and has wood, but how you feel about Amouage Opus V will likely depend on how much you like oud.

Perfumer Jacques Cavallier created Opus V. It has notes of orris, agarwood, rum, rose, jasmine, civet, and dry wood accord. According to Amouage’s PR machine, “the vision and inspiration for this fragrance is the internet and how knowledge and the art of living are shared amongst the glabal community digitally. This fragrance takes inspirations from the exploration of the tradition and classical art of sharing knowledge to how knowledge becomes fragmented in the world of artificial intelligence, and which has become an acceptable way of living nowadays.” (Whew! I bet Jean Claude Ellena is thanking his lucky stars his thematic fragrances for Hermès have to do with gardens.)

When I ponder classical art, the internet, and fragmented knowledge, I come up with the smell of fried transistors…

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The designer Tom Ford can take credit for bringing the intense, earthy smell of oud, or agarwood, to the Western mass market, but his Oud Wood perfume simply tapped into a traditional scent used in the Middle East and Asia for thousands of years.

— From For a Coveted Resin, the Scent of Rarity Takes Hold at the New York Times. (But if Tom Ford can take credit for bringing oud to the Western mass market, surely it is because of Yves Saint Laurent M7, not the Private Blend Oud Wood).

The company SoOud was founded by Stéphane Humbert Lucas of Nez à Nez, who describes himself as a “painter-aesthete” who “writes and sculpts aromas.” The ‘oud’ in SoOud perfumes, if there is any oud in the formulas, is conjured by rich fragrance notes delivered in a Middle Eastern style.

Asmar, “the dusky one,” contains bergamot, white honey, carnation, roasted coffee, amber cigar, Grape marc, amber, tobacco leaf, chamois, musk and vanilla. I like the first minutes of Asmar best: a bold mix of honey and “amber cigar” (a creamy, sweet tobacco note). As the perfume develops, it becomes smoother, more gourmand…

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2009 turns out to be the year of oudh, at least in the niche perfume sector. Let’s see, there was Pure Oudh from By Kilian, and Midnight Oud from Juliette Has A Gun. Czech & Speake relaunched Dark Rose. Le Labo contributed Oud 27, and Bond no. 9 did an oudh for Harrods and then another as their first signature scent, Bond no. 9 Perfume. Indie line Soivohle did Oudh Lacquer, and Micallef did Aoud Gourmet, and Amouage did the Epic duo. Comptoir Sud Pacifique did a quartet (Aoud de Nuit, Aouda, Nomaoud & Oud Intense), but got beat out by the 8 (!) fragrances in the Boadicea the Victorious Oud Collection. For all I know, Montale beat them all — it’s so hard to keep track of new fragrances from Montale that I’ve mostly given up trying.

Al Oudh, L’Artisan Parfumeur’s latest entry from their travels series, thus joins an already overcrowded room. That, plus the fact that perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour is working with a traditional oudh palette of Middle Eastern spices and rose (the notes: cumin, cardamom, pink pepper, neroli, rose, castoreum, civet, leather, musk, oud, sandalwood, Atlas cedar, patchouli, myrrh, incense, vanilla and tonka bean), might make you suspect in advance what turns out to be true: Al Oudh is not the most original or unusual oudh fragrance of the year.

Still, Al Oudh is a bold, very enjoyable outing…

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Try telling people that your perfume contains pungent oil extracted from a thick black resin produced by a parasitic mould and you'll probably get suspicious stares.

But refer to the pungent ingredient as oud and watch their eyebrows rise with interest.

— From As a fragrance ingredient, earthy oud breaks the mould at The Globe and Mail. Kevin is quoted in the 11th paragraph.

Czech & Speake is a British bathroom fixtures brand. They started their fragrance line in 1980 as part of an overall strategy to “do everything that has to do with luxurious baths” (they also carry shaving products and leather toiletry bags).¹ Dark Rose is one of their newer scents — it launched in 2003, and I can’t say for sure when it was taken off the market (reportedly due to production problems of some sort or another), but when I first tried it in late 2006, it was already impossible to find. Is it a kindness or a torture that perfumistas routinely share samples of discontinued fragrances?

Dark Rose was re-launched this year, and I was looking forward to trying the new vs. the old. Most unfortunately (or not: sometimes it’s best not to know) my original sample has turned, so I can only tell you about the new. It has rich top notes, with lots of saffron and that medicinal smell that often accompanies oudh wood (the notes: saffron, Bulgarian rose, patchouli, sandalwood, oudh, amber and white musk). It does, undoubtedly, smell vaguely like bandaids for a time…

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At the heart of this new collection is the rare and beautiful ingredient Oud, the aromatic resinous heartwood from the evergreen Aquilaria trees…

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Comptoir Sud Pacifique has launched the Voyages to the Orient collection, a new set of fragrances in their Eaux de Voyage line:

Aoud de Nuit (shown above left) ~ “A sensual and captivating nectar revealing the magic of the East thanks to an armful of precious woods and vibrating spices wrapped up with musk and vanilla, sustained by a pinch of warm caramel”, with notes of bergamot, blackcurrant, black rose, iris, vanilla, cardamom, saffron, cedar, caramel, patchouli, sandalwood, oud, tonka bean, musk and animalic accord…

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The word “oud” — when relating to perfume — always makes me think of…MONTALE. Montale has won the oud wars in the West by creating more oud-centered fragrances than any company in sight (or smell). When I heard that Le Labo was releasing an oud perfume, I thought: “Poor Le Labo — you haven’t a chance!”

Le Labo launches Oud 27 this month; it’s Le Labo’s first global launch since 2006. (Oud 27 will not be associated with one city — you can buy it at all Le Labo boutiques.) Le Labo divulges only a few components of Oud 27: incense, cedar, patchouli, saffron, gaiac wood and oud…

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