Perfumery generally prefers to work with domesticated versions of raw materials. The emphasis of French feminine perfumery is mostly on refinement and so-called femininity. Stonkers like Amarige, Poison and Angel do occur occasionally, but things usually quickly revert to the mean. Beyond that, the skill of perfumery is to build surprising accords, literally 1+1=3, and that simply doesn’t work with components that don’t play well with each other. Raw oud was, and is, a wild-animal raw material, and one imagines naturals houses like Robertet and Mane have been running oud through still after still to separate fractions with less ornery temperaments. It looks like the ouds Mathilde Laurent works with have got their French permis de séjour and can be relied upon to use the cutlery from the outside in.
The end result is therefore less a barnyard chorus, more a new shade of slate gray in the background, to be added to the dark brown of castoreum, the golden syrup of sandalwood, the ivory of musks, the mottled green of ambergris, the spark blue of woody ambers. For a long time I thought that the only reason perfumers had latched on to oud was sales figures in the Gulf, but I was wrong. Cartier’s ouds take the now-domesticated beast through some dressage routines, and I now see why perfumers want to play with it. What Laurent, and so far practically no one else, brings to the problem is an uncanny talent for (a) radiance, as in perfumes that fill the place with a delicious hum without being overly loud up close, and (b) a genius for using well-known materials in a way that does not tally with expectations. Her rose, her vanilla are never where you expect them.
Samples from Cartier. The infinity symbol ∞ is equivalent to the old 5* rating in the guide.
For paying subscribers, reviews of Oud & Ambre, Oud & Pink, Oud & Menthe and Oud Radieux