Les Heures Voyageuses - Oud & Oud
Cartier (2014)

One expects a perfume called Oud & Oud to be boss, but I’m surprised by how trad it is. A rich and ripe tobacco and leather mix, it has a loamy, slightly mentholated, sweet patchouli rising like a road bump in its middle. The oud here is a musky creature, gently purring, but the drydown is where it lost me – a kind of polite woody-ambery remnant that I can’t imagine shelling out even half the asking price for.

A nice oud, familiar but just different enough. On me, it smells like a rubber eraser mixed with wet tree bark and a fart (that's not a complaint, just the best description I can muster). It's also kind of medicinal in the background, like a hint of band-aid and just a touch of sharpness that calls to mind saffron or gasoline, but not really either of them.

Given time, it all congeals into a dark forest floor smell, natural and compelling and still a little gross. A sweet resinous note comes in underneath the forest dank, hinting at incense. This leads to a pleasant mix of incense and sandalwood with a charred, animalic edge.

I honestly think these Cartier Ouds are the best in a very crowded field of designer ouds - all are good and just different enough to stand out, wearable but not dumbed down.

With a name like "Oud & Oud", one can get the impression that this is a beast mode fragrance, clarified and ultralinear. That doesn't seem to be the case...

Cartier's Oud & Oud attempts at being as basic and true to form as an oud fragrance can be without breaking IFRA requirements. The result is a handsome, highly wearable oud with an initial animalic quality that settles down to a basic, warm woody fragrance of great worth. It feels natural and covers the skin with a just-above-skinscent level of fragrance; surprisingly, the moderate strength potion lasts a LONG time!

The right balance of resinous, smoky, "band-aid", woody characteristics, blended expertly and memorably. May not be the most nostril-blasting take on an oud scent, but it is inarguably one of the most thoughtfully crafted.

Now to find a decent decant of this for myself.... :-)

Highly diffusive, killer sillage, but not very strong...

I wonder how long it took the perfumer to come up with that barnyard top note that lasts just a few minutes, suggesting a true oud.

The dry down is heavenly, but for me too light, compared to real ouds which are odorant powerhouses....and too light of a hand for an oud+oud. I would expect a stronger dry down. That said, technique, this smells just like a true oud, so the thumbs up is for that. From top to drydown, all I get is a profile of oud. Hurray! something is successfully done in this overdone world of ouds.

This is elegant, can be worn by any gender, and is a great impression of the real deal. I have the Oud Absolu too, so I'll write about that later.

Just a note, if there is real oud in this, this perfume it's not a dilution of a real oud as that would break IFRA regulations that state that oud (agarwood) can only be about 4% of the fragrance concentrate. There's a lot of other stuff in here for sure, but they all comingle into a set of accords that contribute to the top, middle, and base. The biggest difference is in the top, that barnyard smell, which lasts a minute or so after the alcohol dries. The rest is simply a gorgeous oud mix. I don't know how she did it, but it's genius.