Arabian Horse 3.1

I love equestrian-themed perfume compositions and consider this one the bar from all I have tried so far. I'm looking forward to the new one from Papillon. I do feel that this one is hard to top though. An almost flawless perfume. Complex, unique, compelling, well-blended, smooth, true to its idea, and wearable. Especially the latter part. I feel these types of compositions are difficult to pull off. Many artistic perfumes are not that wearable around people, and the other way around. This one feels like an artistic exercise yet upscale and poised to the point that no one would think you have just been horse riding. It also stretches beyond that. It's an agrestic, hinting to the fields and wildflowers, a pseudo-chypre making use of mossy-earthy accords paired with labdanum, a leather perfume, after all, horses and saddles usually go well together, and an Oriental once it settles into the base where there is a nice warm glow from the cistus and the musks. The opening smells like a field in the countryside as soon as the Summer rain hits. Wet grass, wildflowers, clover, followed by narcissus. At this point, you'd think, why call it "Arabian?" as it smells more like a meadow. The heart is where the brilliant "horse mane" accord comes into play, together with a well-paired leather facet. In my childhood, I used to play around horses and sometimes press my face against their neck or mane. This is what it smelled like. Difficult to describe. I can only imagine that Pierre loves these animals and spends a lot of time around them to develop such a vivid accord. The base of the perfume is not as impressive as the opening and the mid, yet still intrigues with the perpetuating creamy leather accord, pressed against cistus and musks. At this stage, the name fits, as it shifts from the meadows to the dunes. It is one of the perfumes that made a long-lasting impression on me, even more so coming from a house I did not know back then and from which I had never expected something like this, highly recommended to people who want to experience a unique composition or those who love agrestic perfumes, leathers, and of course, horses. IG:@memory.of.scents

This is beautifully unique but inoffensive. Arabian Horse opens with slightly sweet florals that dissipate quite quickly, and present almost no green notes on my skin. I can't say I'm particularly familiar with Cypriol oil, but there's a vaguely medicinal essential oil scent that is reminiscent of a menthol-based heat rub like Tiger Balm. It's pleasant and clean without being overbearing, and adds a refreshing vibe to an otherwise warm scent upon dry down. The dry down to me is more sweet-sappy woody than musky. The musk that is there doesn't have the heavy, animalic intensity that I would expect of an equestrian-themed perfume, but I think this is for the better. It's more of a vintage leather coat at an secondhand shop. Whether or not this hits the mark as an equestrian perfume, I can't say. What I can say is that this is a gorgeously true unisex. The smoky wood and musk notes lean masculine, but are pulled back towards femininity by the faint-but-sensual sweetness. Unfortunately the sillage on this is upsettingly weak. I have to press my nose to my wrist to get anything after the initial application. Would love to own a bottle but for the price, it's probably not in the cards.

Truly a fragrance which evokes equestrian scenery; starting from wildflower covered meadow to "de luxe" wooden barn and leather riding accessories, this smells natural and unconstrained and at the same time refined and privileged. Hermes comes to mind, except this would be further upgrade, a higher level of imagination and complexity. Accordingly, stages of development are including various notes - from grassy green, earthy and flowery, woody, leathery, animalic and balmy. Tipically PG - masterfully blended, to my nose this fragrance is most of the time a leather fragrance - smooth as a butter, so to speak. In short - begins as a muted spanish leather and develops into very fine and smooth animalic/oriental. Drydown took my breath away and I would buy this expensive fragrance (signature collection) just because of it (totally agree on BaV comparison)!

I'm obsessed with this and have been since I first...ok maybe the second time I smelled it. Unbelievably morish. An animalic musk sits in the background of this photorealistic olfactory dream; leather, hay, dew drops on wild flowers in a yellow and green English field, the sun is rising, the fenceposts are aged and creeping with green moss, and it's springtime. Perfumes like this are why I'm so in love with perfumes if that makes sense(?) Serene. 10/10 even with its poor longevity--just means topping up after a few hours and experiencing that glorious opening again. Edit again: the longevity on this is not poor by any stretch. I just had to let the bottle sit. This is, and always will be, one of my favourite scents ever. Love

A complex fragrance. Florals (narcissus and rose), musky leather, sweet amber and strong cypriol in the base is what I get. Overall a smooth very unisex leather fragrance, even if its overall sweetness may please more the feminine crowds, in spite of some animalics facets. The price point is a bit steep for me to justify the purchase of a full bottle that I would reach for only occasionally, but still, it's one of the best offerings of Pierre Guillaume and a must try, at least a sample. Colder days, 30+ Edit: After another couples of wears, I have to say that it is extremely unique, and definitely entered my to-buy list, even if this house is rarely discounted, and the full retail price for this one goes around $300 :(

Spectacular oiled horse-saddle leather surrounded by a meadowful of scents, from earth/humus to hay, greenery and pollen-laden flowers (narcissus and dandelion). The horse itself is breathing sweetly over the whole scene and a smidgen of amber creeps in at the drydown. Perfect in spring and early summer. It isn't a huge projector, but the scent is so crazily refined yet joyful I could soak in it, and sometimes sort of do...I love so many of Pierre Guillaume's perfumes but this and the much-lamented Bois Blond have my heart.

Does the reviewer below really call that a review? More like a comment on names, could we please keep this for actual reviews by people who actually have smelled a scent! This is one Gorgeous leather fragrance! One of the best I've come across and I have some lovely leathers in my collection. I know it lists some flowers but believe me this is leather from beginning to end. It is of the very highest quality ingredients. Running right out to buy a fb of it!

This is art in a bottle. I blind bought this as an early birthday gift to myself, and I’m so glad I did. It’s the most photorealistic equestrian scent I’ve ever experienced. The opening is bold but as it settles it becomes surprisingly wearable. I also tried it on a paper strip, and the drydown a day later smells exactly like being in a stable. As the commenter below me said, perfumes like this one are exactly why I love fragrance so much.

As a determinedly urban woman who's ridden a horse for maybe 8 hours tops, over the course of my entire life ... I am probably one of the last people in the world this should appeal to! And yet it does ... ooooh, and how. Other reviews nail its appeal - the well-balanced mix of very funky, organic, animal-based stuff, leather and hay and musk, with enough airy top notes to add some music and grace to all the grunting and snorting. It's done with a fine touch and control of the detail - for instance, yes, the leather note is very specifically an equestrian/saddle leather, not like the smell a soft pair of suede gloves, or a raw cheap handbag, or of a live sweating ox, all of which you might find in other perfumes. This particular leather is well-tanned, well-oiled and well looked after. The opening is breathtakingly green and fresh and delightful - and that's even before that nuanced, true to life leather kicks in, and then after that there's a sweet course of gentle synth-musk + really rather lovely amber to savour. Would be an absolute thoroughbred, even a signature scent, for me if the longevity were better; but sadly this one has no legs - it just doesn't last and runs out completely after around 3h. Sillage is almost ridiculously discreet, but I rather like that. What I can't take is such a beautiful, beautiful scent which has so much character but so little stamina. A real shame - I would happily pay more for a stickier, stinkier horse from the same stable. ETA: of course I buckled and bought it (but second hand and at discount) and we're getting along famously.

From official website (and the way I understand this): Top Notes: Wild flowers, Grass, Narcissus absolute Middle Notes: 'Horse's mane' accord (i.e. 'Leather'), Labdanum absolute Base Notes: Musk, Cypriol 'Coeur', Amber, Woody notes It is simply glorious. Performance is good enough, but sillage drops rather quickly. Yes, it's technically a modern interpretation of a Chypre, but why call it a Chypre-floral and not a Leather-Chypre? To me it comes across as a Spicy Leather perfume or even a Leather-Labdanum one. Minor detail (or maybe more than minor), if the horse is galloping in the English moor, why is it called Arabian?...

I really REAAALLY enjoyed this. This felt like soundtrack music rather than an actual song. Like the kinda music that plays in between band sets, or something similar. The amber-musk combo is vaguely familiar, I canNOT put my finger on it, unfortunately, but I will indeed try this one out again as it warrants at least one more try. The musk is inoffensive, the amber is pleasant (not overbearing, overripe or overwrought), and the dynamics behind the foreground as very pleasant. Very pleasant. I really like this, it's more ethereal than an outright power scent. Onto the next stage!

If it came out as a regular from the line I would have bought it right away, but since it is so expensive, I won't. Anyway, the fragrance is a lovely leather with a strong hay/stable feeling (probably because of the narcissus absolute) and it has the same leather/musk accord you can find in other similar issues from PG: Cuir Venenum and Cuir d'Iris. It made me think about some scenes from the movie "Immoral tales" by Walerian Borowczk.

It’s such a strong and yet charmingly sweet leather scent. I definitely feel the horse vibes, but it’s just the sweetness of the amber, florals, and hay that lifts the whole scent as it dries that’s fantastic. It smells like a time capsule of an old money family’s horse stable in their summer home. Makes me feel like i’m in a dry and hot summer at dusk with flowers blooming around me. Your next summer romance is just around the corner.

Arabian horse opens with a unique floral plus dry grass or hay scent. This quickly gives way to an animalic leather smell with the floral/grass moving to the background. Final dry down becomes a combo of animalic leather and wood. While the scent is unique, there's just something about it that's off. Can't quite put my finger on it. Not that it's offensive - hardly, it is not that animalic once it dries down and can certainly be easily worn. Just mediocre and didn't wow me. Performance is also mediocre which is a shame considering the price.

The name fits. From the very opening Arabian Horse creates a setting that evokes equestrian affairs. It smells like farms, barns and steeplechases. The topnotes are strong and urgent, but the stables-and-tack mis-en-scène is just exposition and dramatic build-up. The heartnotes are the reveal. The pacing of the perfume reminds me of the actual experience of approaching a horse. At a distance I think what sublime animals horses are. Then, each time, as I get close I'm taken aback. Fuck, they're huge. Same with Arabian Horse. As the perfume sweeps into the heart, there you are with the horse and, fuck, it's huge. The waxy animalic sweetness is offset by a bitter green-tinged floral that gives a raunchy touch. Narcissus flowers are earthy and have a hay-like aroma. Narcissus absolute (I smelled it just once) is even more fecund than the flower. It smells of hay, yes, but it also smells of horseshit, not a bad scent by any means. Think of horseshit as filtered hay. Narcissus is one of those perfectly balanced, good-with-the-bad materials. It also has one of the most animalic facets you'll find in a botanical, which lends a credulity to the perfume's image. Still, it's only one part of the picture. The thickly layered musks have a trippy, arpeggiated circus-calliope feel. Together with the narcissus they creates an aggresive tone, balanced but mobile. More suspended or poised than settled. The horse angle is brilliant. The scents of leather and wood play with an equestrian-lifestyle fantasy. Polished saddles and stirrups, form fitted johdpurs that sound a crisp crack when struck by a crop. It's the subdued kink that I imagine Guerlain want you to long for every time you see an Habit Rouge ad. If you're into an equestrian fantasy scene, this is the scentscape of your kink. Down on all fours with bridle and bit, mucking out the stables. Catherine the Great would have dug this stuff. But the perfume can be taken in another way. For those of us too effete to have such vivid drama, Arabian Horse is also a well-layered woody-floral chypre with a solid dose of leather. It even has a background whiff of the flotsam found at the bottom of a purse. Arabian Horse hits the same spot for me as Jean Kerleo's brilliant 1000 for Jean Patou--tightly composed yet animalic. I didn't follow the release of Guillaume's remixed perfumes * and when I first smelled Arabian Horse (3.1) I didn't know it was a reworking of Cuir Venenum, one of my favorite perfumes by Guillaume. Both perfumes create atypical leather notes and use them to build imagistic, suggestive perfumes. They don't so much smell alike as pursue their compositional goals similarly. * Cozé Verde 2.1 Le Musc et La Peau 4.1 Vetiver Matale 6.1 Grand Siècle Intense 7.1 Bouquet Massai 10.1 Indian Wood 11.1 (from scenthurdle.com)

A friend sent a sample of this a while ago, and I dismissed it at first — I couldn’t picture why anyone would want to smell the way this perfume smelled. I’ve since spent more time with it and, while I have much respect for the way it’s made, it’s not quite aligning with my own tastes. Although I can't speak to its nationality, this scent really does smell like a horse, and I’d peg this as one of the most provocative and visceral scents in the PG catalog — one that all PG fans should get their noses on at least once. It’s basically a leather that's mixed with hay and musks for some barnyard raunch, scrubbed clean with the illusion of ivory soap and rounded out with a thoughtful non-cliched amber base. The clean / dirty effect creates a fantastic tension and, for much of the wear, the scent wavers between precarious and meditative. The musk is too intriguing to be off-putting (a tonkin-esque musk, I’d say), but it’s far removed from the safety of a standard white musk (think L’Ombre Fauve, only deeper and more leathery). It’s truly an equestrian musk with a slight sour, milky hue to it, and I’m impressed by the way Guillaume was able to use the effect to capture this overall sense of place so convincingly. Twenty minutes in and the musk back off to reveal a subdued foody amber base (waffles, to my nose) that sits well with the leather and what I assume to be castoreum. The amber-levels continue to rise, but the transitions are seamless and the scent never gets too sweet. The interplay between musk / leather / amber / hay is what makes this tick, and I’d say it’s on par with the scents Guillaume was producing almost a decade ago. It starts out smelling more like an environment whereas an hour later, it’s closer to a recognizable perfume. While ultimately it's just a unique take on leather, the name forces such a strong association that’s impossible to get away from the horse vibe, which, I think, limits its flexibility. It reminds me a little of 2nd Cumming’s general feel (the leathery health food store effect), but 2nd Cumming seems more scaled back. This announces “I’M A HORSE” from the get-go and pretty much clings to that image the whole time. Arabian Horse is impressively done but it’ll probably just have a small group of fans who really dig it. Out of the more recent PG releases, this is one of the one's I’d recommend the most, even though it’s not quite right for me.

Arabian Horse feels like incidental music in olfactory form, setting a scene, enhancing the atmosphere. Its elements are suggestions rather than sweeping statements, leaving light punctuation across the panorama, hints that suspend. The periphery of meadow grasses and wildflowers that move just into the eye line, falling just short of full radiance, leaving yearning in its wake. This kind of aching and longing—so beautiful, there is the smell of all being just out of reach, but beckoning. Beyond the fields and the dry dunes, smelling this makes me feel like I almost hear this horse making its way forward, its muffled clops. There is sun and blue skies, not one cloud. I've never had an intimate bond with any horse—in fact I've never even so much as rode horse once. Yet, I know their smell. The perspiration and horsehair, the musk from their manes and the saddle leather. The distant mingling of soap, manure and hay. Bitter-green, cresolic (narcissus absolute), "horsey" barnyard detritus hitting the pure air. The tension between clean and dirty in perfume always feels tranquil to me. There's a comfort to what feels authentic, what feels organic in a consumer's paradise of the sanitized. I retreat to such smells when the world feels more artificial by the day. Arabian Horse is indeed "agrestic," and those who no me know I love that sort of stuff. The fragrances that speak to the visceral leave the largest impressions. This is so here, even as it isn't the powerhouse of heft and density that maybe certain sensibilities crave. It is incidental, reminding you of where the surface of your body is visiting as you go about whatever is you do after you apply it. The distant clops as you shift in your seat, the dreamy stable scene as you move in space, a warm Nagarmotha smoke and whisper of amber beyond the meadows nudges you. Such is the pleasure derived from easing anticipation and letting one's imagination run free like horses.

What can you say about ARABIAN HORSE? This scent is true perfumery genius, and I have to concede: Pierre Guillaume is a perfume genius. This scent is SO amazing, SO strange, SO wonderful, SO surprising, SO ingenious, SO creative. It's one of the greatest perfumes in perfume history, and I do not say that lightly or without due diligence. For one thing, this scent all-but-defies description... I can't really tell what I'm smelling. Suffice it to say: this is a tangy, horse-y leather enhanced not with smoky notes, but with bitter herbal and woody ones, possibly some "sauvage" wildflower hints, and even a phantom hint of toasted/salty vanilla sweetness. There is a very slight sulphuric nuance, maybe? And of course, a phantom smell of horse dung... which, as we know, is thrilling to those of us who can groove with animalic musks. This scent will NOT be for everybody. Only seasoned, experienced, intelligent perfume lovers need apply. Half of those who smell it will be confused, mystified and even possibly repelled by it. The only drawback, perhaps, is that this scent is so experimental and avant-garde, that there are not too many social occasions in which I might wear it. Too strong for many daytime occasions, and not cozy/approachable/sweet enough to be a clubbing fragrance. In my case, it's a scent I wear for myself... while I'm working on the computer. I just repeatedly huff my hand... and marvel at Pierre Guillaume's genius. Highly recommended. Anyone may wear it, but definitely skews masculine.

My full flacon came in today! This is a gorgeous fragrance. One of the new breed of photorealistic leather scents, augmented with herbs, resins, flowers... and an animalic horse-y musk. I love the very bold, highly unusual opening takeoff of sharp-smelling green nagarmotha and dusky narcissus-- not the cliché bergamot/citrus takeoff one might expect-- as it gradually dries into a somewhat sweetish, gently spicy leather, with suggestions of a cinnamic calamus root and nutmeg ... sweeter than, say, CUMMING; wilder and far less buttoned-down than KNIZE TEN. It probably leans masculine, though there are some women who will love wearing it, too... It's that evocative. It has a clean/dirty quality that I think of as being French... You don't want a scent that's TOO clean. As a reviewer correctly states, below, narcissus absolute smells sweetly of hay, but also has curious whiffs of horse manure. Curiously, it does not remind me of CUIR VENENUM which I once owned... no "grape-y" floralcy here. I will agree with other reviewers here who say that ARABIAN HORSE does not have the longevity on the skin that one might like... Still, it's marvelous.

Best equestrian scent I’ve encountered. 🐎🐎🐎🐎🐎 Sweat lathered horse + worn saddle. Very true horsehair note in here, layered with warm broken in leather. If you want to smell like you’ve just came back from a hack: this is the scent. Don’t go for the horse scent that will have you smelling like apples and hay. No one smells like that after a ride. Also for anyone looking into equestrian inspired scents: Sarah Baker Riders smelled like goats, not horses.

It opens as Lipstick, Leather and Hay. An undercurrent of soap weaves through. It beds down to a musky, warm skin scent, quite apparent as a PG notion, as it is in the vein of all those I have tried. It has an outline of a CDR and with a less stiff and formal finish. A very comfortable country Leather. Feminine or Masculine? I would say Unisex,as it points to the Earth, the Animal, the Human. Beautiful, romantic and highly recommended!

Leather saddle, hay, a little smoke and a little bit of horse poop in the beginning. Followed by tree sap and floral notes (pine?). Nicely balanced and smooth. As the poop fades away you're left with this luxurious smoky leather smell. It gets better as it warms up with the body and becomes very wearable overtime. Interesting. Don't judge perfume by its top notes.

Supple leather and marshmallow musk, with blurry honeyed floral and even vaguer aromatic touches. Something recalling imortelle. Not unpleasant but I basically can’t even think of anything else to say about it besides that. It’s just very smooth and indistinct to me.

Starts slightly, faintly animalic. Doesn't smell like a horse, thankfully. Ten minutes in, it does begin to smell like saddle leather and spicy soap. Not powerful, but quite pleasant, a bit like a powderless Bal a Versailles.

I took one sniff at the store and it smelled so much like a horse and a stable that it made me chuckle. Fun, but not for everyone!

hay, leathery, animalic it becomes powdery & ambery in the dry down for me

If anybody has a partial bottle for sale, let me know!