A brief look at Serge Lutens’ Périlleusement Vôtre, a rose oud. I was not enthused, to put it mildly.
Périlleusement Vôtre
Review en Bref: Serge Lutens Périlleusement Vôtre
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Category Archives: Oud Fragrances
Areej Le Doré Chinese Oud
Chinese Oud, the latest release from Areej Le Doré, is a perfect example of a self-taught perfumer honing and refining his style over time to become the equal of many professional, big house noses today. The opulent parfum is the result of a collaboration between Russian Adam and his friend, Jamira Oud, who distilled and worked on many of the rare Chinese raw materials, including wild, aged, nearly extinct Hainan agarwood which is considered by many collectors to be one of the top varietals in the world due to its unusual floral, fruity, and citrus tonalities.
I’m going to tell you upfront, right from the start, that I loved Chinese Oud and I thought that it was not only complex but also one of the more approachable, versatile, refined, non-blocky, and smooth floral leather ouds (or floral oud orientals) from Areej Le Doré.
Chinese Oud, 10 ml bottle version. Photo: Areej Le Doré
Chinese Oud, 10 ml bottle. Photo: my own.
Areej Le Doré Grandenia
I hadn’t planned on writing about Areej Le Doré‘s new, upcoming Grandenia here, but this is such a complex fragrance that I couldn’t do it justice or convey its character and numerous twists properly via simplified text presented as screenshots on Twitter. It’s also a fragrance that, completely unexpectedly, made me think of how Serge Lutens approached white florals several decades ago and his then-revolutionary goal of turning their traditional or quotidian presentations on their head by avoiding Fracas-style, singular floralcy and by playing with dark elements that were traditionally the preserve of “masculine” fragrances. I see the same sort of mission and objective here, albeit taken to extremes.
But this only pertains to one of Grandenia’s many stages. Subsequent twists and turns unexpectedly took me into territory firmly dominated by non-floral, dark, masculine-skewing fragrances like SHL 777’s Oud 777 and Naomi Goodsir’s Bois d’Ascese before moving on again. In essence, Grandenia morphs across a wide spectrum and it’s not easy to explain how it transforms — from a sweet, bright, white floral gardenia bridal bouquet to a sepia-stained, gender-fluid gardenia-jasmine oriental in the same universe as Serge Lutens’ Une Voix Noire before becoming a dark masculine in the style of Bois d’Ascese and Oud 777, then twisting into further unrelated creatures (some with unexpected, unlisted tobacco and booze aromas) and finally ending up similar to War & Peace (I)‘s drydown— on Twitter, even in a 13 screenshots of text. So, let’s begin.
Smoke #6 by Stefan Bonazzi. (Website link embedded within photo.)
Areej Le Doré Agar de Noir (+ Santal Galore)
Hello everyone. I hope you have been well and, above all else, safe and healthy in this utterly wretched year. No, I am not back, but I have been inspired and impelled by the latest Areej Le Doré collection, Series 6, to do pretty lengthy reviews on Twitter. And since I typed everything out via screenshot for Twitter, I figured I might as well copy and paste it some of it here for those of you who aren’t Twitter fans. This may be the only review that I’ll end transforming into a blog post, or it may not. I did a pretty lengthy review for the new Santal Galore as well, but since I stupidly deleted the source document, I’m going to be lazy and just link to the Twitter thread at the end instead of re-typing everything from scratch.
None of this will be like what I’ve written and done in the past in terms of photos or all the rest. I pecked the reviews out on my phone, which comes with a whole series of likely auto-correct and typo issues, but I figured it’s better than nothing. For now. At least it tells you something about the fragrances if you don’t read me on Twitter. (And I strongly advise you not to follow me on Twitter if you’re not interested in politics.) Continue reading