Purpose
Amouage (2023)

Amazing fragrance. Opens with a dry, lemony spicy frankincense. This is bone dry, woody and powerful stuff. I would choose this over Purpose 50, this is a little less busy, but that gives it a clarity. One of the best wearable smoky woody scents, this is a definite masculine powersuit in liquid form. At the heart, i think a huge cumin note comes to its shine, it has this cooked vegetables smell to it. It is slightly sweaty as it develops. A challenging, artistic fragrance that showcases what Mr. Bisch is capable of. In my opinion a modern masterpiece.

It is always wise to be cautious when naming a perfume. Calling a perfume "frankincense", or "vetiver", or "tonka" or anything related to an ingredient/accord is always the safest approach - which is why so many houses go that route. It's much safer to tell the consumer what they're getting than leave a lot open for interpretation and risk disappointment. So, when a house names a new perfume "Purpose," particularly a house like Amouage with a rich history of the highly-interpretable and boundary-pushing, such a strong word needs to be backed by a fragrance with a strong vision. Cue the biggest issue.

The perfume opens with very vegetally green and sour bergamot, accented by rainbow pepper and pimento berry - the latter two being very modest. Frankincense rises and takes up the entire stage. As it dries down over the course of the next couple of hours, vetiver tries to take the stage as well but this is still primarily a frankincense scent. It gets muddy after a little while longer when you realize you're not sure if you're smelling fresh and sticky resins of a slightly sour and green olibanum, or the very cold and old sour ashy smoke of frankincense, or if it's the sour aromatics of freshly cut vetiver. Amouage says that rose, sandalwood, and papyrus should be present. There is a touch of florals but barely; nothing truly identifiable as rose. The sandalwood and papyrus are absent or transparent. At the base, according to Amouage, is saffron, suede, mystikal, and oud. Midway through the perfume all the way to the final dry down and skin scent really only the suede and oud are detectable via a soft and meek leathery scent accented by the funkier side of oud. It's an odd transition, to go straight from sharp and cold to warm and leathery and animalic.

"Shamanic awakening" is used in the press description of this fragrance, presumably because the perfume is supposed to invoke an altered state of divine guidance to one's purpose in life. If that is the case, be concerned for your life by this revelation because it says your purpose is unclear and muddy. Ironically, Purpose never really quite decides what it should do. The accords arrive in strange staccatos that never form a melody, and it's too rambling to confidently speak to the complexity of life's purpose. Part of this may also be due to the quality of the ingredients; I hate to say it, but Amouage has done one of the least Amouage things it can do with Purpose and seems to have used lower-tier ingredients. I don't know why else they would be so harsh and sharp. In a way this reminds me of Tom Ford's Vert d'Encens, a very green incense perfume. But Vert d'Encens does what Amouage probably should have done: use top tier ingredients, blend them smoothly, and keep it intentionally very minimalist. Instead it seems like Amouage tried to execute a complex vision that wasn't fully fleshed out. If the purpose of Purpose is to relay that life's purpose is meandering, confusing, full of sharp edges and staccatos, then Amouage succeeded.

Purpose by Amouage (2023) asks me the question: What is the purpose of spending almost $400 to smell like burnt asparagus? Well, none that I can recall, although I can squint long enough to attempt seeing what the real intent of this was, if I really want to. I will, for sake of complete review, although I can say I thoroughly hated having this stuff on my skin. Prior Amouage fragrances could be faulted for heading into a too-commercial territory under Reynaud Salmon, after a wonderful stint with Christopher Cheong. This one shows a bit of an overcompensation, swinging the pendulum too far into the challenging and bizarre direction, far and away from even the usual baroque musings of Gulf perfume.

The opening is this sickly vegetal woody smoke accord, something I think that has to do with the unfortunate clash between the pimento spice, pink pepper, dry bergamot, and whatever materials they are using for "papyrus". Another culprit here is the Givaudan captive called "Mystikal", which has no relation to the incarcerated rapper, and is achieved by oxidizing Aldehyde C-12, making an incense-like note. This clashes with the top notes, the green and stemmy may rose (a deviation from the usual dark taif varieties used), and the suede layered over akigalawood. If Amouage is using captives from Givaudan, it means the entire scent had to be made there, so someone had a lot of "fun" cooking up this horror.

Ultimately, this limpid green puke of a scent just languishes over the nose like overcooked vegetables over smoky dry psuedo-woods, like a fire is burning in the firepit while everyone is farting after eating huge bowls of brussel sprouts, with just the faintest bit of rose and vetiver to try and hold hands, hoping they survive the night without too much mental scarring. Spoiler alert: they won't. And frankly, neither will you if you're unfortunate enough to spray this unawares at a boutique carrying Amouage. If this is your first experience from the house, you may very well never give anything else they make a fair chance, and they'd probably deserve it, to be honest. Just nasty, nasty, horrid stuff, through and through. Thumbs down

Amouage Purpose is one of the Oman house’s recent releases in 2023, which I’d smelled in passing previously but smelled a bit more this past Saturday at Perfumology, along with some other recent release. It’s a curiously bright, spicy, resinous, a bit earthy, understated blend. It’s multifaceted in terms of the note breakdown, with some standouts for me being pink pepper, frankincense, saffron, akigala wood It gives me a bit of environmental déjà vu, like being in an art class with lots of interesting raw materials. I find it fairly easily likable while being nuanced and a bit idiosyncratic, qualities that usually do not go hand-in-hand, so I’d certainly recommend that others check it out if that haven’t yet, along with the other recent releases—Search, Meander, and Enclave—all pleasant in their own ways.

Purpose is priced at $360 for 100ml and is sold through various retail means including great boutiques like Perfumology, so it’s on the pricier side, but is one of the more interesting releases from Amouage that I’ve tried in the past few years, at least for me.

7 out of 10