Les Heures Voyageuses - Oud Radieux
Cartier (2015)

Oud Radieux by Cartier (2015) is part of the Les Heures Voyageuses range meant to showcase oud in various forms. Whether or not real oud is used I cannot say, but the style of oud presented here is known in Arabic countries as "shay oud", and is a style that buffets a tiny bit of oud with olibanum, sometimes ginger, sometimes honey, and sometimes dry rose or aquatic-type notes. The point of "shay oud" is to be lighter, cleaner, but still strong; not musky or sensual, and more like what Westerners would call an "office-friendly" scent. Shay almost always refers to Luban (frankincense) paired with some type of Cambodian or drier oud, and an example of that in a lower-tier market would be Rasassi Shuhrah pour Homme (2015) or Louban by Montale (2009).

With Oud Radieux, Mathilde Laurent plays with Sichuan pepper and ginger, mixed into the "shay oud" which has an unlisted incense edge to it, very dry and vibrantly aromatic. The shimmery quality of the perfume is boosted by some Iso E Super, but not on levels like Jean-Claude Ellena, and the overall feel is of some sort of green material like mastic or cypriol in here making that huge, vibrant projecting feeling alongside the dry oud, incense, and ginger. Perfectly unisex to my nose and quite gorgeous, this is probably one of my favorite of the Les Heures Voyageuses line. Performance is insane so a little goes a long way. I don't see anyone needing more than one bottle of this, unless you're a maniac that wants to convert that beauty into pure pain for yourself and everyone around you.

Overall, this is pretty unique in the range, and you won't find anything else like this among Western designers, so you'll need to dig into brands like Rasasi, Afnan, Al Rehab, Asgharali, Al Haramain, Lataffa, Anfasic Dokhoon, and all the "scary" brands from the Middle East that get conflated with clone brand because they're not against making a quick buck by duping something from a Western designer to sell locally, or back to the West at a discount price, cheekily destroying the perception of quality and exclusivity designers try to perpetuate among a mostly-uneducated customer. It rare to see a designer do something this close to a product one might buy from one of these gulf brands, and focused on a subject that has almost zero context in Europe or North America. The stiff "luxury" range price tag is the only deterrent for me. Thumbs up

Mathilde Laurent, when asked to create a line of oud fragrances, had mixed feelings: "I find that going to Arabian countries is like selling French Coca-Cola in New York. But at the end, as I really love oud, I decided I wanted to work on it. So we had many discussions. And I said that what I wanted to express about oud is purity. Real oud. [ . . . ] When you smell some ouds on the market, some of them just don't smell of oud. And I think that's a question of dignity. I find it insane."

Purity is a good way to describe the ethos of the line (at least from my memory of it). Laurent does not reinvent or obscure oud. In this line, oud is not an accent, it is the centerpiece, and she is illuminating it. Oud Radieux is very much an expression of that ethos.

Pairing a dry, clean oud with the fresh-warm-spicy mix of ginger and Sichuan pepper seems so simple that it makes this fragrance hard to review. There is no gilding of the lily here. Oud Radieux's structure is distilled down to essentials: you could remove nothing without gutting it, and nothing could be added that wouldn't diminish it in some way. It delivers a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts effect, giving the oud a fizzy, almost delicate effervescence.

Nice!! I never imagined the idea of combining "hot" notes like ginger and pepper with agarwood...but here it is, done expertly using quality ingredients in a balanced way.

Oud Radieux explores the sizzling, spicy aspect of the oud mystique in a clever way. Ginger dominates in this formulation, and there is a mysterious fresh green presence nestled in here as well. Could it be pine? fir? cypress? mastic? Anyhow, it adds an additional aromatic flair to an already hovering masterpiece.

This comes across as an almost progressive oud scent, exploring territory that is not very common (Montale's enormous "Aoud" collection comes close).

VERY hard to find less than a full bottle, if even, of Oud Radieux (Saks Fifth Avenue excepted). Good luck finding even a decant of this magnificent oud creation!!