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Apicius
Very helpful Review
4
Original or Unique?
Quite inconsistent is the price policy of the Berlin brand April Aromatics. They have “Body Mists” for 22 € but their niche fragrances range up to 200 €. The price for Precious Woods definitely needs some explanation: 30 ml perfume cost 169 €, and it comes in a rather modest packaging. For me, the keyword “natural perfumery” alone is not sufficient enough to justify this.
I found Precious Woods in Berlin, in the well known luxury warehouse KaDeWe – and I think it should sell well there. It belongs to those fragrances that are both spectacular and rare. Customers who get to know Precious Woods will be fascinated, simply because most of them will never ever have smelled anything like this.
April Aromatics describe Precious Woods as sweet and earthy, and one can see it like this. It is basically a sandalwood fragrance without lots of development. It contains more or less just one, very unusual accord. Instead of sweet and earthy, I would go a step further: this is already fecal and maybe also animalic. It smells like countryside, like nearby pig farms and the natural manure that farmers spray on their fields. It may depend a little bit on where one has been brought up whether one may like it or not. Some of the most fascinating fragrance notes have their origin in decay and perfumes like Precious Woods show us that nevertheless such can be turned into something beautiful.
Many perfumes play around human or animal vapours which they comment on, emphasise, suppress or alienate. The trick is to keep them invisible or at least semi-conscious so neither the wearer nor the environment will give a thought about these connections. I hope it will not keep anybody from testing Precious Woods because these relations are a bit more visible here. Probably not everybody's cup of tea, Precious Woods can fascinate and astound people.
However, Precious Woods is not so unique as it might appear to the majority. - I already know this accord, from an Arab perfume: Oud Ma'Al Wardh by Al Haramain. There, the earthy sweetness is connected to the rose (wardh) which I never found convincing. And never have I thought it possible that a Western brand would take on this strange accord. Precious Woods has disabused me about it.
In opposite to the very intense Arab perfume, Precious Woods is maybe a bit more refined. Additional woody notes provide bitter and dusty-dry aspects which suits well to the sweetish accord. And so, Precious Woods is indeed very eccentric but never crosses the border to being nauseating. One can have a different view upon its Arab kin.
Apparently, the perfumer was lingering through Arabia's souks for us, exploring those hoods where Western tourists do not go. Beyond the never ending oud hype, there are still secrets to discover in Arab perfumery. I strongly recommend a test of Precious Woods if you can find it. It might give you a new experience.
Precious Woods with its high price is a fragrance that relies on the ignorance of the audience, or better, the poor availability of Arabian perfumes: you can buy Oudh Ma'Al Wardh for smallest money, i.e. at zahras.com for 22,59 $ per 2 oz.
Pized
Emorandeira
