The Arabic sky has fallen to earth and has manifested in a small sample of perfume that I can only describe as perfect for my taste.
Mukhalat Malaki is exactly the oriental fragrance blend I have been searching for. Rose, oud, amber, saffron. Perhaps nothing new, but the decisive difference from what one might already know lies in 1. the mixing ratio and 2. even more importantly, the naturalness and quality of the raw materials. And here, I find both have been perfected. The most important thing is that the oud truly smells natural (at least that’s how it seems to me). Absolutely balanced, mild, and yet so multifaceted that I would immediately dispose of all my Montale - oud samples if I hadn’t already done so a long time ago.
I have a sample of 1 ml of perfume oil. I applied about one hundredth of that, in the form of a tiny barely visible drop, to the sleeve of my wool sweater and rubbed it with the other sleeve (I rarely apply perfume directly to the skin, as there is usually a lot of poison in it) and all day long I was surrounded by a subtle gentle hint of oud. Completely unobtrusive yet mysterious and deep, yes, this is exactly how I imagine the sultans and their "sultanas" of past eras must have smelled. This is the true royal scent (at least for my humble perception).
I find the sweetness of the scent only slightly in the background and perfectly balanced. Absolutely suitable for men. For women, I might add a drop of sweet vanilla (to the sample, or correspondingly more, to the bottle). And if a man desires it to be a bit more robust, I could imagine adding some aged vetiver or even a lot of pure sandalwood oil.
So, it’s an oil that can be excellently layered (with noble essential oils), because the oriental balanced note (and above all the oud) will always remain in the foreground - delicious.
That the noble drop only reaches 74% surprises me a bit; I can hardly imagine it getting much better. The finesse and complexity of the real and also intense oud, perfectly embedded in the traditional accompanying components, makes this perfume a truly classic Arabian fragrance experience that I would recommend to anyone wanting a genuine introduction to the (natural) traditional Arabian scent world. And if it should still be too strong, as mentioned, for example, mix with 50% real Mysore sandalwood, and the dream continues...
My milliliter cost 3 euros at Scents of Arabia (thanks for the info, Apicius). So that would be about 90 euros for 30 ml; I think that is the absolute minimum if you want noble natural ingredients. Of course, natural oud also comes in price ranges that hardly anyone can afford, while synthetic oud is likely to be given away. Anyone who only knows the easily available cheap Arabian perfume oils here, for 1 euro per ml or less, should urgently dive into the Arabian natural world, because otherwise, one only knows how Arabian chemical laboratories smell.
At Scents of Arabia, you can get various high-quality Arabian perfume samples, even "Arabian oud," which are otherwise not easy to obtain. The samples are even shipped from Germany.
