Qafiya Year Of Zayed

I like this. I have Qafiya 01 and 02 and I like them both, but none of them are remotely related. The opening has a feminine, golden yellow, exotic floral, ylang-ylang punch, which is lovely. There has to be ylang in this. The dry-down becomes similar to Roja Dove’s ‘Amber Aoud’ which is always an inexpensive treat. Yep, I like it.

Head: Saffron, Violet Heart: Ylang-Ylang Base: Oud, Amber, Musk I owned it once upon a time years back but sold it off as quick as possible. I hunted for this perfume for months that I ended up paying way too much for because I purchased it when it was still a brand new release in UAE in 2018 so naturally, me residing in the United States, I was raked over the coals with a criminally high mark up and totally gouged on shipping charges. I think I paid around $240 US when in actuality, the real world price was in the realm of $300 AED or, $75 US! To my profound dismay, Qafiya Year of Zayed was far too feminine to even consider keeping. What I was anticipating to be a heavy oud and amber dominant perfume turned out to be a ylang and white musk bomb with little, if any oud, saffron nor violet. It smelled like rotting fake bananas and the cheapest aerosolized hair spray imaginable. It was horrendous. To be honest, I utterly hated it. But it didn’t even smell good to begin with so the whole thing was a bust. It stunk. Year Of Zayed was a stinker, and a text book example of one at that. It was so poorly constructed that I was legitimately angry. One of my worst blind buys ever. There was no saving grace anywhere. The execution was horrible at best. The whole thing was so out of balance and remarkably screechy. It felt like a 2 note wonder of base grade synthetics. I searched far and wide for the other notes only to end up every single time on strong synthetic ylang and a piercingly awful white musk accord that permeated through walls. And in the usual manner of anything from Ajmal, it was an absolute nuclear weapon in terms of potency and impervious to soap and water. A markedly handsome presentation box with a very thought out and aesthetically pleasing bottle that was filled with useless trash.

This is very much mostly oud to me, dominates the fragrance but still manages to be of the more subtle variety (not medicinal, not barny, distinctive but feminine) Light florals and sweetness beneath. Very blended, so the spices and florals are a very accurate description of no particular spice or flower standing out, the oud takes the stage here. As for amber and musk, I'm used to a very particular type of resinous amber after my long and intensive amber stage so I can't seem to detect it either, but there is a sweet almost vanilla-esque undertone which some ambers tend to smell of - musk is a subtle support also. Oud all the way, and while I'm not trying to enable any of you blind buy queens over here but I would say a fairly safe blind buy if you are looking to explore oud. Or just hit me up if you are in the UK I have a nice big bag of oudy samples up for swap.