Oud Douce Amère

Exit the Chinese restaurant, up the moka and saffron stairs, and into an elegant boudoir laden with magnificent roses. The air swirls with pungent, spicy woods... eyes start to close... and, as you go deeper, the narcotic dance of bitter green and jasmine sweet sends you off into a golden, Elysian slumber...

The first few minutes it is a little bit more bitter, leathery, sickly and a little fecal after which it is difficult for me to describe it ... A sweet masterful formula, elegant, magnetic, of an imperial oud, subtly musky and a celestial harmony with dozens of genuine ingredients. Rich.

Didnt really enjoying this one to start with just too much going on but give it a few hours and it really settles down into a really quite nice oud and amber attar. Performance around 6 hours on my skin and no sillage

precisely as 'le Vagabond' says, this perfume draws you in in Mae West's, Gloria Swanson's boudoir with noticable roses' wealth, jasmine, labdanum, immortelle, violets all but the roses submissive to a formidable dense wall of oudh, civet, myrrh, olibanum, tonka, castoreum, blackest tea, tobacco. this is the anti-aquatic, anti-ozonic, anti-sport perfume being unapologetically PERFUME as it also has reminiscences of Gale Hayman's Beverly Hills, Poison, the ballistics of Giorgio, the athmosphere of Dusitas Oudh Infini, Tubereuse Criminelle, Ex Idolo's Thirty Three and not Roja Doves poshness but Montales superior strength and stride. I love it and I consider it the la Grande Dame perfume. my mom would have loved it.

This one was interesting! A dark oud-rose, a bit animalic with a solid resin base that works well. Not a scent that blew me away, per se, but one that plays like a perfume and NOT an attar. I kept on sniffing and sniffing to check it was was it smelt like -- it doesn't have the qualities of an attar -- it seriously comes across like an EdP or something alcohol based... Anyway, nice but not something I would seek...