All items mentioned in the review were purchased with my own funds.
Agarwood, also commonly known as oud, oudh, or aloeswood, is a popular ingredient in Oriental perfumes (a category of warm, resinous, spicy scents). It is a dark, fragrant, resinous heartwood produced in Aquilaria trees as a response to mold infections; expensive, controversial due to its rarity and possible sensitizing effects, but with a rich, complex, incensey smell and powerful fixative properties, it's prized for its uses in perfume, mainstream, niche, and indie alike.
The oud accord in Yves Saint Laurent's 2002 perfume M7--and the concurrent creation of several good synthetic oud accords--sparked a trend of oud notes in perfumes, according to Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, who describe oud's scent as a "weird combination of honeyed sweetness and woody freshness" in their excellent book Perfumes: The A-Z Guide.
I have reviews for you of three indie perfumes based on oud and vanilla; although two of them are no longer available from the retailers, you may be able to track them down second-hand through perfume forums or eBay. I'm unsure of which of these use natural versus synthetic oud accords. Araña and Manor are definitely vegan; I believe Perpetual Motion Machine is vegan as well, and that all three are cruelty-free, but I couldn't find confirmation of this online.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Araña (limited edition, no longer available)
"ARAÑA
Sharpie on copier paper, 2012
This is araña. That's spider in Spanish. She's big and has one thousand million babies.
Vanilla-infused agarwood, oak bark, and Laotian benzoin."
Araña is part of the April 2013 "A Tremulous Song" limited edition series of perfumes from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. The Pickman Gallery series of scents features perfumes inspired by specific pieces of artwork, with Cthulhu-mythos copy describing a mysterious art gallery in the Miskatonic Valley of Arkham, MA: "Founded in 1923 by interdimensionally renowned portrait artist Richard Upton Pickman, the Gallery offers the Miskatonic Valley community a dynamic roster of stimulating, dread-provoking exhibitions and enriching public programs."
This exhibition in the Pickman Gallery features scents inspired by the artwork of young Lilith Barrial, daughter of BPAL's owner Beth Barrial. Proceeds were donated to the charity First Book. The bottle art on the 5 mL amber glass bottle includes the namesake spider drawn in Sharpie on a pink background.
(A note on benzoin: it sounds synthetic, but in perfumery, the word usually refers to a vanillic-smelling resin produced from the bark of Styrax trees, and also known as gum benjamin.)
At first sniff, Araña smells quite similar to BPAL's non-limited edition, steampunk-themed scent The Antikythera Mechanism, though less sharp than that scent. The sharp oakwood dominates the scent when wet, with a certain harsh sharpness that I usually translate as a "perfumey" or "cologney" fragrance, odd and undescriptive as that may sound--think of the "perfumey" descriptor as the equivalent of the music you might overhear spilling out of a thumping car stereo turned up all the way; you can't ignore it, you can identify it as music, but it's just a sort of general noisy assault and you can't really make out specific notes or particularly enjoy it.
A sort of fruity smokiness starts to rise out as the scent dries down and the harshness fades a bit. I think this is the oud making its appearance. This woodsy sharp smokiness lingers for a long time, with the sharpness decreasing and the woodiness mellowing out over time.
Hours later, only the very base of the perfume remains, a warm, very creamy, almost rummy vanilla-benzoin scent.
This is the most masculine of the three scents, and the most complex, but I also find it the least approachable, and hardest to enjoy in the wet phase. I like it best once it has dried down to the vanilla base and the sharp, perfumey woodsiness has died down.
Solstice Scents Manor ($15 for 0.35 oz in a blue glass rollerball or $2.50 for a sample)
"Woody-Vanilla Musk, Vanilla Accord, Glorious Black Agarwood & Exquisite Aloeswood
Manor is the scent of a once grand estate, now disheveled, forgotten and left exposed to the elements. The faint scent of previous owners and their esteemed guests - exquisitely perfumed ladies mingling with the intense rich and musky scent of smartly dressed gentlemen - meets rich wood floors and heavy wooden doors long since opened, decaying beadboard and Wainscot topped off with a thin layer of dust. It is very sophisticated and absolutely intoxicating."
Manor was originally a limited edition/seasonal scent from Solstice Scents, but was so popular it was first added to their general catalog and then used as inspiration for "The Manor Collection," with a set of perfumes inspired by each room in the fictional crumbling manor--Attic, Kitchen, Cellar, etc.
Manor opens with a mild black vanilla scent. It's creamy but woodsy and dry--not an overt sharp wood like the oak in Araña, but more as if you were eating a French vanilla ice cream cone on another planet where it wasn't actually sweet. Vanilla musk anchors it to the skin and becomes more obvious as the scent dries down. It stays subtle and close to the skin, and doesn't morph much (it's quite linear)--a definite vanilla scent, but with the musk and oud dirtying it up, keeping it out of the realm of gourmand, desserty vanillas. The longer it wears, the more the incense-smoke quality of the oud rises out of the vanilla.
I've seen it described as "soft" and "cuddly," but I find it cool and a bit impersonal, not warm and cozy.
Soft, musky, quite sexy and easily wearable, it seems like it would be a fantastic signature perfume for someone--the type of addictive perfume that you might smell on someone's skin and be ever unsure of where the perfume ended and their natural skin scent began. My main complaint is about its linearity--it's lovely, but not complex.
It comes in the standard Solstice Scents bottle--a cobalt blue frosted glass rollerball with a sepia-toned label with the name of the perfume hand-written on the side.
Possets Perpetual Motion Machine (discontinued, no longer available)
"Smooth action makes you think it can go on forever, sweet and non medicinal, this is the seductive side of science. Deeply buffed wood and suave vanilla, a secret emollient and something wonderfully perfumy. Perpetual Motion will get your attention. Unisex and perpetually moving. The icon is a real perpetual motion machine, Perpetuum Mobile of Villard de Honnecourt (about 1230). Vanilla, foody, gourmand, woody, brass-like."
This was my favorite scent from Possets and the one I would always recommend to people looking to try scents from this perfumer, but it was discontinued a year or two back due to issues with the perfumer no longer being able to source one of the components.
It comes in a 5 mL amber glass bottle with a Da Vinci-esque sketch on the label and the name written in a fairly tacky, squiggly, vaguely medieval font. (The label says 6 mL, but it's the same size as the bottles that most indie perfumers label as 5 mL.)
The funny thing about Perpetual Motion Machine was that when I first read the description of the scent, it sounded like a blatant ripoff of The Antikythera Mechanism, described as "Bronze gears spin inside a polished wooden case, and an entire universe dances within: Teakwood, oak, black vanilla, and tobacco." Once I tried it, though, I realized it was an entirely different perfume, not similar to The Antikythera Mechanism at all. It comes full circle now, though, with Araña both smelling similar to The Antikythera Mechanism and sharing notes with Perpetual Motion Machine.
The description of this scent would imply metallic notes, but I don't find Perpetual Motion Machine metallic or masculine at all. The first sniff of Perpetual Motion Machine is an alarming, overwhelmingly sweet buttercream or custard scent, almost unbearably cupcake-like, like a perfume for preteens. It passes through a baby-powdery, somewhat plastic doll head-like French vanilla phase and winds up quite similar to Manor in the drydown--a musky vanilla underpinned with incensey, resinous oud.
It's warmer than Manor, sweeter and rounder than Araña, but once it has dried down, it shares the quality with those other scents of being definitely vanilla without being particularly gourmand. It is perhaps the most approachable and edible of the three, though, with a very "moreish" vanilla extract note at drydown that demands deep sniffs from any vanilla perfume fan. Smelling it is like eating marshmallows and vanilla ice cream in a room where smoldering incense smoke lingers.
All three perfumes have very good lasting power due to their components--they all share a heavy dose of basenotes like wood and vanilla that stay on the skin for ages, and a general lack of brighter/lighter topnotes. While they'd be acceptable year-round, they all feel like autumn scents to me, the type of slightly mysterious scent you'd wear with a wool turtleneck while cool winds blow changing leaves around you.
The sad conclusion to these reviews is that my husband hates the scent of oud, so whenever I wear Manor or Perpetual Motion Machine, he complains that I smell like a musty attic. The vanilla doesn't seem to sweeten or temper it; the smoky animalic quality of the oud comes through and ruins the scent for him. I love these perfumes, but hardly ever wear them out of courtesy to him. I haven't had Araña very long, and have avoided any "musty attic" remarks so far, so it's possible the oud doesn't bother him in that scent.
Have you tried any oud perfumes? Are you a fan? Does the note make you think of musty attics or incense smoke? Are they too heavy for the summer, or a refreshing change from the expected light aquatics and fruity citrus splashes?
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