Azlan Oud Saffron Edition Extrait de Parfum 100ml

Saffron is in the name of Al Haramain Azlan Oud Saffron Edition Extrait de Parfum 100ml and it is the first thing you smell, which is not always the case with a fragrance named after a material.

It is used dry here: leathery, faintly medicinal, with that bitter red warmth that makes saffron so recognisable and so hard to confuse with anything else. Fig sits beside it, and fig is a green material as much as a sweet one, with a milky sap quality and a hint of the leaf as well as the fruit. Violet threads powder through both, cool and a little melancholy. It is an unusual opening and a very good one, and it is the main argument for choosing this over the sweeter bottles beside it.

The middle is brief and dry. Frankincense is resinous and papery, the smell of smoke after it has cooled, and amber is the warm resinous glow underneath it. Between them they keep the composition serious, and they are the reason it never drifts towards prettiness.

Musk and cedarwood finish it, the musk clean and close to the skin, the cedarwood sharp and sawn. Seven materials in all, which makes this a short composition by the standards of the line, and it is better for the restraint.

At extrait strength it will last most of a day without being loud about it, sitting close after the first hour. That suits it: this is a scent to be noticed by people standing near you rather than across a room. Winter, evenings and cold dry weather are where it belongs, and it reads as unisex. The maker is Al Haramain, in perfumery since 1970 and a manufacturer in its own right rather than a licensor of anyone else's name.