Shams Al Doha

Love this one! Starts out with the beauty of rose for an hour or so then comes slowly the oud. The type that smells like the paste you clean your shoes with. With more flowers. Love it, but seriously!

Discontinued unicorn of an attar. I can't begin to describe how heavenly this smells. I am lucky to have managed to grab one of the last bottles from the main Amouage factory in Muscat.

This scent makes me feel like I’m walking through the old souqs of Sharjah at dusk, with oud smoke in the air and stories in the wind.

I found Shams Al Doha today (a tiny sample of it, at least), and I put on about an hour ago. Immediately, I was struck with how floral-sweet it was, mostly a smooth rose with a heavy dose of sandalwood. The sandalwood isn't the woody-grainy variety I'm used to, this one is all top and mid, meaning it's likely sandalore or another sandalwood-adjacent aromachemical. Nonetheless, it still adds heft and bass to the floral elements, making it quite a bold, ever-present scent. It does, unfortunately, remind me of A LOT of those Arabian attars -- I think once you try a few, you realise how 'samey' they are. And an I've been going through my attar decants this week, this reminds me X, which also reminded me of Y, which reminded me of Z too. I managed to get a 70-pack decant set 12 years ago, and I found the ones I liked most were the ones that I tried earlier on, as I had the joy of discovery colouring my impressions. Once I got further down the list, I was not as impressed with the latter ones I tried, as they were often 'Homage + frankincense', meaning my joy at finding something nice had been coloured. Anyway, this doesn't blow me away, but it is beautiful...

wow wow wow...this is artistry right here. wow. this starts off smelling harsh and abrasive. at the start i thought it was pen ink and leather (most likely oud, musk and amber). then all that haze lifts and the rose(s) appear front and centre with a supporting role from the sandalwood. wow. the metamorphosis is immense, epic even...this is what amouage does SO SO SO SO SO well. it's such a pity these works of art are discontinued or not for sale. such a pity. on an aside, scoring each component is sooo hard. i mean, many of them appear, dominate, and then disappear. hard to score them. i mean, is sillage more important than the longevity? either way, wow...this is awesome perfumery right here and it sucks that you can't get this anymore...