Thailand Oud in Cairo Ministry of Oud 2021

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,"

In these last years of our dying civilization, it is particularly important to read poetry again: Rilke, Brecht, Yeats, Jeffers... The Second Coming is certainly not the worst description of the current state of the world - and with a sardonic glance, perhaps also of the perfume industry.

The "haute parfumerie" that blossomed in the Belle Époque in late 19th century France, a product of technological progress and the awakening middle-class consumer and leisure society, so aptly captured by the Impressionists on canvas, is now definitively history.

But what do we have now? Why does a product like "Thailand Oud in Cairo" exist alongside 65,000 comparable ones? Who wants to buy it and why? Why does it look the way it looks, why does it smell the way it smells? What is it, anyway? These are not unimportant questions, as the deepest truths of a society often reveal themselves in its most banal products, the trashiest movies and series, the cheapest junk, where no effort is made to disguise the underlying ideologies, where they are openly inscribed for the discerning eye. We gain our deepest insights about ourselves not on a Zen retreat in the Aegean but in the TEDI next door.

"somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs"

So let’s see if I can bridge the gap between the end of the known world according to W.B.Y. and the end of the perfume world as I once knew it. I just asked in a perfume forum how older and younger perfume enthusiasts categorize the phenomenon of the neo-Arab mass market with its countless dupes, tweaks, and synthetic ouds. The interesting answer was that it fills the gap left by the old standard brand perfumery, which is now priced beyond good and evil for many consumer groups, while qualitatively it clearly resides in the 4th circle of hell. € 175 RRP for empty wood synthetics from Prada, etc.

Additionally, one must consider the structural collapse of the concept of "luxury" - on one hand, that the "original" Gucci bag comes from the same factory as the dupe and has the same inferior quality. That, in other words, behind the signifier (sign) of luxury (Gucci logo) no actual signified exists anymore. On the other hand, every 15-year-old today believes they can finance three Ferraris and a villa in St. Tropez with a streaming channel. "Luxury" can be for anyone is the message of social media, just be aspirational. Thus, luxury is hollowed out, and it ultimately doesn’t matter whether I wear a real or fake Rolex, nor whether I wear a genuine Parfum de Marly or a dupe. In the latter case, it actually doesn’t matter, because while the real Rolex still has its own qualitative residual substance (far from the purchase price, of course), the Arab clone can be just as good and occasionally better than the original from Tom Ford (QED Amber Oud Tobacco Edition). Both are ultimately just algorithmically formulated industrial products of the cheapest kind.

So we live in an iridescent consumer world where real luxury (Birkin Bag / genuine old oud), aspirational consumption (Hermès perfume / "oud"), masstige (Louis Vuitton / "oud"), and luxury or masstige clones (Lattafa Oud) blend into one another - and nobody really cares, as long as the real inequalities of global plutocracy remain stable, to which this system, with its veils of Bourdieu's subtle distinctions, actively contributes. So much for meaning and function. Now, however, concretely:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

The packaging and bottle of the present perfume (approx. € 18) are partially more elegantly crafted than, for example, Penhaligon's Legacy of Petra (RRP € 240, currently around €60) where the foil is already peeling off. Both are expectedly synthetic, blueprint fragrances with little budget, and they hit it head-on. Good bases cost money and time. TOIC manages at least an appealing Siam Oud simulation in the opening, woody-fruity-ester-composty, accompanied by a bit of sweet synthetic, which unfortunately quickly settles into a somewhat cheap rubber-leather note, surrounded by wood synthetics and a spectrum of spicy notes (tobacco, myrrh, cinnamon). The typical "Niche Synth Aura," which also wafts at you from every Penhaligon's store in London, is well captured and, for me, due to the low fragrance oil concentration, more pleasant and easier to bear than, for example, many of the unbearable "Portraits" stink bombs.

In the end, I see only minimal but not significant aesthetic or qualitative differences between cheap and expensive and gratefully reject both. I would rather pluck one last time flower like the protagonist from Ballard's The Garden of Time to throw back the approaching throng. It smells of Oud Caravan by Abdesalaam Attar and Habit Rouge.