Secret Oud

This appears to be the bottle I own, with the round gold label -- but the bottle is amber, not clear, and the scent is definitely NOT sweet in any way whatsoever. So perhaps Rosequeen's review below was for the OTHER Caron "Secret Oud", the one custom-created for the Eastern prince's wedding guests? I should begin by saying that I normally prefer sweet perfumes that aren't musk-heavy. I like florals with lots of sweet nectar, or fruity ambers like Jean Patou For Ever. This scent is a HUGE departure for me. It starts out green and almost astringent, very sharp. There is cedar in there, and a bit of musk... something oak-mossy, and NO rose that I can smell. Just green and woody, with a bit of amber and moss... ... and a LOT of magic. That's the only explanation for the way I feel about this fragrance. I can NOT get enough of it! It's absolutely unisex. That is, it's definitely something that would smell gorgeous on a man, not the least bit floral or girly, and certainly not one of my usual ultra-feminine choices (like Jardins de Bagatelle or Le Reve de Nirmala). This is the BOSS. This is an executive fragrance for a man or a woman who wants to smell great, irresistible, and commanding all at once. This is definitely NOT a scent for sweet little old ladies like me... F*** that. I'm wearing it anyway! Longevity is great. I wear it to bed and wake up smelling it on my wrist the next morning.

this is true oud in its classic form. Not so called ouds with light flowery notes, but propper show stoper!love it.

it smells simple but great for those who is oriental fragrance lover and admirer!As for me the beginning is sharpen by spicies and agarwood,but a while later it gets soften throught the whole pyramid by flowery notes!I`d rather prefer wearing it in dry winter evening time than in humid summer daytime!But this fragrance is worth being optional for both sexes!Have a good time trying and wearing it on!

A horrible mistake, for both me and Caron. Caron must have been in a hurry to be one of the first on the block among the big perfume houses to get something oud out there, a last attempt to keep up (with who, if you're not going to advertise in national magazines, even French ones?) But I guess I figured they'd do more research, smell more oud fragrances first or something. Anyway, when Secret Oud came out I was optimistic. I'd smelled and eventually bought nearly every Caron fragrance they made, and I was intrigued. I had been waiting for more oriental scents to choose from, never imagining the exotic deluge to follow. I didn't want to wait for someone to sell a sample of Secret Oud online. (Not as many samples being sold on online in 2011, and never many Caron ones anyway.) And the big department stores had given up on Caron to the extent that they weren't ever selling more than about 5 of Caron's classics. So I couldn't just go downtown and pretend to some gushing sales clerk that I was actually going to buy something after inhaling half the counter. So I paid full retail to some online perfume seller, maybe Les Senteurs in London, for a whole bottle, which must have set me back at least $200 at the time. It's ghastly. Sweet, cloying, gooey. Heavy, and lasts at least 7 hours on my skin, and lingers the next day even after a bath. Not much oud in it either, at least not compared to oud fragrances that have followed along since. Not attractive to the Middle Eastern market, I wouldn't think, if that was who they were gearing it for. In the 1970's or so, when I was around more people all the time, East Indian women who wore traditional saris wore perfumes like this, so maybe Caron thought they were going to be buyers. But whether they were still wearing scents like this in 2011 I don't know. It doesn't have the authenticity of Raghba, which they must be wearing in India considering how many sellers of Raghba on eBay are from there. I kept Secret Oud near the front of my perfume closet as a sort of warning. And I still shudder when I see it. Just tonight I ran into a sample vial I have of Caron's Accord 119, which came out at about the same time, and maybe came from the same seller from whom I bought the Secret Oud. They are really very similar. (Ouch, rosequeen.) Added July 6: Ever analytical, since I really can't smell much rose in Secret Oud, I decided to figure out what this perfume is reeking of, and actually look up the Jatamansi note in the pyramid. I found this description on a website that sells bottles of this stuff: "Jatamansi or Himalayan Spikenard is a very calming oil, both emotionally and physically, and is of special value in serious skin conditions. Powerful antifungal. Indicated for psoriasis, athlete's foot, fungal infections, dandruff and emotionally for deep sadness. Jatamansi (Himalayan Spikenard) is a powerful oil for grounding, for emotional needs. Jatamansi is known in aromatherapy circles as "a woman's oil" and is recommended for use in spiritual blends or blends for meditation. Use Jatamansi oil on the feet and crown before bed to promote meaningful dream states." Well there's your answer, rosequeen. This stuff is antifungal enough to cure psoriasis. I bet it is. Calming it is not, at least not the stuff Caron bought. And I really wonder how helpful it would be in grounding a troubled spirit. Unless the goal is to overwhelm you and slap you silly into compliance, sort of like electro-shock treatments of the 50's. No thank you. But some of this description sounds vaguely familiar, so Caron may have cleansed its definition into something that sounded more mystical, leaving out the psoriasis and athlete's foot fungal cures. And like anyone else, I can be susceptible to exotic sounding notes, and the Himalayas do it for nearly anyone. Added July 22, 2022: Tried again, and only slightly better. I put it atop Caron Rose I'd probably applied 3-4 hours before, which sort of took the edge off. But no reason at all for anyone to race right out and buy this goo. I see Caron tried again in 2019 with a newer version; mine is definitely the 2011 version, with the amber colored bottle. I loved Caron until about 1990, but they've been on a skid since then and this one and the one with the compelling statue-of-liberty bottle design really are the nails in the coffin for me.

I wanted to like “Secret Oud.” I like Caron as a house generally, and I have been searching for another oudh perfume to add to my wardrobe. So I got a couple of samples of “Secret Oud.” For the first hour or so, I was intrigued: the perfume featured a distinctive, somewhat resinous oudh accord, in which the oudh was front and center, which accord the perfume kept delivering, steadily, in a linear way. Now, real oudh oil is anything but linear, and has an olfactory trajectory that can, depending on the particular distillation, be quite a wild ride. So the steady oudh accord in “Secret Oud” was obviously a fabrication, comprised of who-knows what oudh substitutes, isolates, and/or clever new molecules. Nonetheless, I liked it. Just as Caron “Pour Un Homme” is a kind of comfort scent for people who like vanilla, so too perhaps “Secret Oud” could be thought of as a comfort scent for those who like oudh. So I thought. At about 2 hours, however, I noticed that my new comfort scent was, disturbingly, fading fast. By hour 3, “Secret Oud” was just a trace, and I had to work to find it. Sometime between hours 4 and 5, it simply could no longer be smelled. Several trials, over time, were consistent in result. There is room in the world, I think, for an oudh comfort scent, in which modern perfume techniques are used to create a semi-affordable oudh accord that just keeps on reliably delivering and delivering something satisfying, if artificial. Unfortunately, “Secret Oud” is not that scent. All the fun happens within the first 2 hours, with “Secret Oud.” After that it’s just work. My score: 4.5/10