Sceptre Oceana

Salty smoky woody...something. I don't know exactly what this is smelling like... Not sure if I like it...straight out of the box. Very smoky, woody and slightly medicinal, Vanilla is just there to soften the edges...its barely noticeable if you didn't know its effects, because the scent tone is not there. This is almost purely Oudy...but it's a smooth and non-animalic Oud. VERY wearable and inoffensive to the public. EDIT: Okay...if you took "Raghba Wood Intense" and separated its two sides...you'd end up with "Bianco Latte" in one hand...and "Sceptre Oceana" in the other. This, LITERALLY, smells like "Raghba Wood Intense" without ANY of the creamy sweet Vanilla... EDIT: Did a fast-forward fridge-maceration overnight and fixed the "strong-greasy Benzoin" issue. Wore this full-body today on top of "Let the Good Times Roll" and it was AWESOME!! No vanilla to be found in this but it might be my new favorite "Oud" fragrance! I'm going to let this sit a few months and come back to it...

Excellent presentation, heavy bottle, fantastic pressurised sprayer and the most addictive male vanilla benzoin scent that for the money is one of the best that you will find. It's linear but I like that sometimes as long as it is a great scent that you keep on sniffing your arm to. I find this one and Malachite to be very high quality for the price you pay and for that reason will probably blind buy the other two in the Sceptre series just because there is nothing to lose, and for the bottles alone they are supreme. Although upon checking my collection I do have Arabiyat Prestige Nashwa Noir which is a very good clone of Falkar so that takes Amazonite out of the equation and also Arabiyat Aariz (the white one) which is a straight up Tygar clone also. Maybe if I have a few drinks it'll be a no brainer anyway....

17JUN26 UPDATE: WooooooW!! This has turned into the most beautiful skanky-vanilla that I own! There is something inherently "After Sex" smelling about it. I won't go into detail but i have experienced this exact smell on someone in the past. It's LOVELY!!! Wow...letting this sit a few months really brought out its character....AND the vanilla that was missing!! Its still powerful...two sprays is enough to last the entire day and into the night. I still only use this for layering to get a smooth vanillic smoky-oudy hint under whatever else I'm wearing. This frag works wonderfully to masculine-up feminine fragrances. I'm not a huge fan of oud...but this is undoubtedly a very powerful tool in my arsenal of scents... 7/10

#773 in my "Tour de Fragrance" I actually did a side-by-side of this and Bvlgari Orum back in July before it was in the database so I set this aside. I rule this a solid dupe of Orum though the quality of the agarwood is slightly lighter in character, but you could talk yourself out of noticing it. Actually performed better on my skin than the Bvlgari. I had the identical experience with the other Le Gemme dupes from Alhambra. Gotta say I'm not as big a fan of the Le Gemme series as many seem to be. Most really like Tygar, but of the four I tried out I was the least impressed with that screechy citrus frag. I really liked Malachite best of the dupes, but at the price you should definitely get all the Sceptre scents.

I was on a trip to Asia for the first time with some of my best friends, the only other fragrance fanatic showed me the bvlgari line up at the duty free airport section and despite tygar being the talk of the convo orom stuck out the most. I was ready to drop the four or six hundred it was to buy it but I held my excitement. Thankfully so because this dupe is genuinely a life saver. You cant have the exact same measurements down to the micro meter if you buy a knock off ferari but from the right mechanic youll get the same thrills, this does the same trick and saves you the price tag. Truly a great scent.