Attar Montale

Its a great combination of sandalwood, roses and a little bit of oud.

In my opinion the fresh roses dominates this fragrance from the beginning to the end.

Very warm and comforting scent. For me it's unisex.

Lasting power is weaker than other releases, but it's very good though.

Updated January 2014

Montale ATTAR is such a compellingly beautiful perfume to my nose, and yet it features a small number of focal notes: sandalwood, oud, and rose. How can it be so gorgeous? Because the sandalwood, the oud, and the rose used are top notch. This is an excellent example of the quality ingredients strain of haute niche perfumery. Instead of attaching a bunch of bells and whistles and curlicues, Pierre--or reasonable facsimile--simply presents these notes in all of their glory.

I really love this Montale creation, the rose dominates the perfume but is deepened by the sandalwood and the measured dose of oud. (I agree with Aromi, see below, that sometimes oud-rich perfumes are a bit much...) There is a dark, mysterious feeling to this creation, with an almost animalic quality close to ambergris in the background, it seems to me. There is also a graininess to the texture which I find quite appealing. It is as though the rose petals were shredded and blended to form an oud-sandalwood-amalgam. So, yes, this creation seems fairly linear to my nose. But that's fine with me, because it smells so good that I don't want it to change.

I love a few of the Montale rose perfumes, but this one is at the top of my wishlist!

Far away from any modern hectic "living world" in big cities, there is a forest known as the "Dark One of Secrets," which can only be entered by those who know a certain password.
Others, who despite several warnings still attempt to enter without the magic word, are said to be transformed into trees according to legend.
And indeed, there are the strangest wooden figures you can imagine.
A "Lady with a Fur Hat," for example, who raises her arms high, or the "Old Man," whose bearded face is "engraved" in an oak.
And there is often a ghostly rustling in the underbrush.
No animal of the forest is known to cause this sound.
Someone who had entered this forest "legally" once let something slip.
It is said to be a rose bush that grows in spurts, reaching up to the highest treetops. Its giant flowers are said to have the diameter of a giant's hand.
And every time the roses bloom, a "wooded one" would be freed.
He or she often reappears after years, remembering only a scent that dominated their "world":
the scent of roses and ancient wood.....
Yet no one ever missed a "stolen time"...
life continued there where it last was..... Strange? But that is how it was conveyed to me.

I promise, this time I'll keep it short:
Montale's Attar flirts, at least according to the scent descriptions, with a traditional Indian Attar made from sandalwood and rose petals. It's actually one of the simplest recipes for a fragrance; the special thing about it is that the powdered sandalwood is distilled together with the rose petals.

You can also easily make an Attar yourself by mixing essential rose oil (possibly from various origins, such as India, Morocco, Bulgaria) with real white sandalwood oil (santalum album), preferably from Mysore. You end up with a beautiful fragrance for both genders!

This Attar is primarily full-on rose essence, but it seems to me that it doesn't aim to be natural at all. I absolutely don't mind if the intrinsic brilliance of rose oil is extended and/or supported with a bit of chemistry in a well-made perfume (depending on the direction the rose should take, whether leaning towards 'soapy', 'powdery', or 'citrusy', there are suitable fragrance components for everything), but with Attar, this has gone quite wrong. I can also only refer to the hairspray note noted by other testers of Montale fragrances, which I find absolutely unpleasant. This rose has nothing fresh about it, no sparkling acidity like Moroccan rose, and also lacks the opulence and softness of a Turkish rose.
Sandalwood is not noticeable to my nose at any moment during the scent's development, hairspray until the end and at best just a hint of musk...
Too little for a house that prides itself on specializing in oriental fragrances.

This Montale has clearly failed for me!