Arabian Oud perfume - Rosewood 100 ml

Product Information

The most evocative shades of brown. Oud Rosewood conveys the olfactory image of both a warm brown streaked with light brown, like a round, soft and lustrous rosewood, and the more rugged, nomadic brown of oud wood."

We were at Penhaligons and of course Bergdorf Goodman could not be missing. But in the end I flew home without new perfume! None that I wanted to afford laughed at me that hard. It was great to test everything, so I thought I would get that at home too. I really like this. This is definitely a western take on oud. I haven’t smelled Leather Oud and it’s been too long since I smelled Oud Ispahan to draw any comparisons. When I first smelled this immediately thought of a few Tom Ford fragrances. Imagine a much drier version of Tom Ford Ombré Leather mixed with Oud Wood and that will give you a relatively clear picture of how this smells. Here’s a breakdown of the notes I can smell:

For me rosewood is the more portable (and better) Oud Satin Mood. The great comment from Eyris before me also compares these 2 fragrances. But wait! It’s not that type of rosewood which perfumers use, with its floral, slightly rose-like odour: that’s from the Aniba rosaeodora tree, better known as Brazilian rosewood. It takes a massive amount of the tree’s wood to produce the oil: each tree’s said to yield just 1%, by weight, of oil to wood. With such huge amounts of timber felled to extract teensy qualities of oil, it’s no wonder that Brazilian rosewood trees – which are grown in the rainforests of Brazil, Mexico and Peru – are now protected, under CITES (the convention which safeguards endangered flora and fauna). It’s also on the official list of endangered flora of Brazil. So: how come rosewood still turns up on ingredients list…? Clever perfumers know that other woods deliver similar effects, and can be used to replace its richness. I wear this when I'm around people who dislike loud things, as it tends to create a cloud of ambery warmth. It hums, but doesn't holler. It feels like the oxytocin, snuggles, and serotonin. These are different, but this scent is probably the closest scent to Rosewood imho. Rosewood is sweeter however, and a little softer. Rosewood outperforms.

There are subtle differences between all these scents but rosewood doesn’t have that strange metallic harsh base that both montales and the mancera have. To my nose there is no close comparison to the 2 other fragrances - Oud rosewood has much better projection and silage and is of a much higher quality blend. Oud Rosewood is a big hit for me, I'd even go as far as saying it's probably one the best MCD releases to date, so much so that I bought 250ml to sit alongside my Oud Ispahan and Leather Oud. OR opens with a warm raspberry, a rather acidic quince and lots and lots of animalic funk. At some times it smells more of leather than even LO does. This opening slowly subsides and leaves a strong, woody and leathery dry down without end. It get something crisp, yet indistinct in the opening...never the alleged lime. After a few times with this, I finally understand the tea note...but it's still more white tea rather than green. All in all, it suffices to say this is predominantly an amber scent.Ingredients: Aqua, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Chloride, Glycerin Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Benzoate, Citric Acid, Polyquaternium-7, Tetrasodium Glutamate, Diacetate, Parfum Throughout evolution, a liqueur scent is noticeable, as if a strong drink had been spilled on the living room's rug during a visit from friends. It is not something that bothers, but that everyone feels. For me, this is the biggest differential of this creation. Although the vanilla is present, the benzoin is more prominent on my skin, reinforcing the oriental aspect of the fragrance. This is a lovely fragrance that reminds me of one of my favorite smells: fragrant triple-milled soap in an old wooden drawer. It's supposed to be for women: the box is super femme, the bottle is a little whimsical (but also quite attractive), but the fragrance doesn't smell feminine to me. It smells more like a nice amber candle burning in a massage studio or an upmarket retail shop (like Banana Republic, or if that's too on the nose, maybe Pottery Barn). That sounds like a diss to committed fragheads, I'm sure, but I actually like this fragrance sometimes. Maybe it's not as deep or as intoxicating as Samsara, but this reminds me of the scent of my 1928 Knabe parlor grand piano, that rich old resinous mahogany aroma that reminds me of childhood visits to a very old neighbor who had beautiful antiques.

It is not Funky ( i consider oud ispahan drydown funky but not bad and leather oud is overall skanky to me) Rosewood is an uncomplicated, clean musky woods fragrance. I have worn it to work quite often and received a compliment from a male customer that said it smelt like a soothing, woodsy spa-scent. It's a fragrance with no frills. it smells different than any of leather oud, oud ispahan, santal noir, and purple oud. its not a version of any of these fragrances whatsoever. if there are some similarities during the progression of Oud Rosewood to any of those fragrances it is less than 10% similarity , even 5%. its to be expected due to some shared ingredients and being from the same house.I can't notice bergamot here.I wouldn't guess tea either but now that I know what I'm looking for,I can see it's like a sugary tea a bit similar to the tea note in Flowerbomb but not as sharp as that one.I can strangely detect something like rose too,a powdery rose and there's also this lovely softley powdered marshmallow vanilla-amber combo which I adore. I can also feel there's a dry, woody base. something like cashmere.maybe this is supposed to be the rosewood but it's not similar to what I expected(I can recognize the rosewood note thanks to Dior Dune which is a real rosewood-prominent fragrance. and this is not like the rosewood in Dior Dune) I detected SOME similarities to Tom Ford Oud Wood and Acqua Di Parma Leather briefly. the 'animalic' note mentioned in the note breakdown of Oud rosewood gives off a similar vibe to the leather note in AdP leather when smelled from a distance. they are not close though. i didn't get civet or castoreum at all. Soon after spraying i got those minor similarities to oud wood. it even felt like i was smelling a cardamom note along with that rosewood. again, not much similarity. Significantly different from oud wood intense . Maybe hints of similarity .