The Kingdom Eau de Parfum 100ml

Vanilla and tobacco together are familiar territory, but putting mint over the pair is not, and that contrast is what makes Lattafa The Kingdom Eau de Parfum 100ml worth a look.

The first few minutes are genuinely cold. Mint is bright and almost toothpaste clean, lavender beside it adds a herbal, slightly powdery coolness, and sage dries both of them out with a savoury dustiness. Then the fragrance warms up from underneath. Tobacco appears first, dry and cured rather than smoky, and vanilla follows and rounds it off, while orange blossom sits in the middle of the two keeping a clean floral line through the sweetness. The base is all resin and powder: tonka bean, soft and faintly bitter like cut grass left to dry, benzoin lending sweet balsamic weight, and labdanum underneath with its dark, tarry pull.

This is a nine material composition with a clear beginning and end, and the transition from cool to warm takes about forty minutes. After that it holds steady for the rest of the day, projecting politely rather than filling a room, which makes it easy to wear at work as well as out.

It is marketed to men and best in cool weather, though the mint keeps it bearable in milder conditions than the base alone would allow. A full 100ml at this concentration will last a long time at two sprays a wear, which is part of why the bottle has the following it does among people who buy fragrance carefully.

Lattafa Perfumes is a UAE manufacturer with its base in Sharjah. Its founder arrived in Dubai from Pakistan, trained in a relative's perfume shop and built his own company from there, and the firm is now known for attars and perfume oils as much as for fragrances in a French manner.