Haibah The Spirit of Dubai 2017

The last two weeks have been really tough. A fragrance has been celebrated for months, boasting so many notes that one might think it could only be purchased in a liter size, which is also reflected in the price. But no, it's actually "only" 90ml. So I let Malte push me into the shark tank and eagerly awaited the scent package with the olfactory pleasure drops from Dubai. Well, yesterday it finally arrived, and so I write these lines with the best of knowledge and conscience, without being disrespectful. So I sprayed… once, not on paper, but directly on my wrist. This spray landed not only on my skin but directly in my central nervous system, and my olfactory receptors immediately pulled the emergency brake collectively. The words of my wife, uncut and uncensored: “It smells like an underarm after six weeks in a cast.” Because Haibah does something that many luxurious orientals do: it confuses mass with depth.

The top notes don't sound bad at first. Woody notes. Rose. Pineapple. Apple. Freesia. Smoked wood. Leather. Lime. Peach. Bergamot. Pear. Indian basil. Ginger. Saffron. Spicy notes. But my God, why so much at once? The problem is: when everything is loud, nothing is interesting in the end. Some people love to talk about "complexity," as if every second fragrance suddenly became a philosophical work by Dostoevsky. But complexity doesn't mean throwing 48 raw materials on the skin at once and hoping that the brain eventually gives up and simply says "luxurious." True complexity arises from composition. From structure. From transitions. From tension. A good fragrance develops like music (thanks, Devainos). It builds something up, plays with contrasts, leaves space, surprises, calms, escalates in a controlled manner.
The fruits in the top notes don't smell fresh or elegant but slightly fermented. A sour-fruity mix of pineapple, apple, bergamot, and lime that desperately tries to simulate freshness while behind it a burning leather camp is already collapsing. My God, this leather, in the top notes. Leather in perfume can be beautiful. Dry, smoky, soft, elegant, dark, warm. It can remind one of high-quality gloves, old bound books, the interior of a classic car, or a jacket. The leather in Haibah, however, smells like a leather jacket in a damp cellar. It has something musty. Something sweaty.
And in the midst of this entire chaos, Oud appears. Heavy, dominant, completely incapable of fitting in harmoniously. Oud has become the gold of the perfume world. Everyone talks about it. Everyone automatically considers it profound. And somewhere, a guy is guaranteed to come around the corner and say: “Oud is not for beginners.” Or worse: “Oud is a journey.” No. It is not a journey. Oud is body care with resin. This whole language surrounding Oud has become incredibly clichéd. Oud is often treated like an elitist secret society for fragrance snobs. As if one had to pass an olfactory initiation test to be "ready" for it. But Oud is simply a fragrance material. Sometimes nice, sometimes difficult, sometimes medicinal, sometimes smoky, sometimes soft, sometimes brutal. Nothing more and nothing less. Haibah pretends to be profound, although it is actually just maximally stuffed. Haibah carries everything at once. Fruits. Smoke. Leather. Flowers. Truffles. Saffron. Oud. Musk. Herbs. Woods. Earth. Amber. Rose. More rose. Even more oud. Even more wood. Even more animal. And yes, this animalistic aspect is REALLY remarkable FOR ME. Not in an elegant way. Not "slightly animalistic," which I actually don't have a problem with. There is something dirty in it. Something slightly sweaty and earthy that, together with the leather and the fermented fruits, creates a combination that seriously reminds me of trampled roses next to a rotten fruit crate.
The fascinating thing is, however, that despite all this criticism, I completely understand why people love such fragrances. Really, because Haibah is by no means boring. And boredom has become a real problem in the modern perfume world. Many mainstream fragrances, and I don't just mean designers, but also those scents that call themselves ultra-niche, smell today like sterile optimized shower gel fantasies with focus group approval. Everything is clean, pleasing, smoothed out, and so carefully formulated that no one feels disturbed. Fresh and completely exaggerated Ambroxan clouds, sweet vanilla mass production, fruity designer perfumes that become completely interchangeable after exactly twelve seconds. In this context, a monstrous oud beast like Haibah can almost feel liberating, simply because it has personality, but a problematic personality for me, a demanding personality. Haibah has character, a terrible character, but character.
I think the problem only begins when fans of such fragrances start to automatically interpret every overload as art. Because not every difficulty is depth. Not every weight is complexity. And not every oud perfume is automatically a masterpiece of oriental fragrance culture. Sometimes a fragrance is simply overloaded, and Haibah is definitely overloaded. It lacks discipline, and that is actually the core of the problem. A good perfume knows when to stop; it knows its limits. It lets individual materials breathe. Haibah, on the other hand, feels like every perfumer in the lab was allowed to add "one more thing" quickly. A bit more smoke. A bit more rose. A bit more oud. A bit more fruit. A bit more leather. A bit more musk. That is no longer fragrance architecture.
And yet there are moments, and I mean this very seriously, when Haibah almost works, late… very late. When the aggressive fruits slowly die down. When the smoke becomes softer. When the leather dries, suddenly something interesting comes through. A warm, dark wood-musk accord with remnants of rose and resinous depth. For a few minutes, one suddenly understands what this fragrance might have wanted to be. An opulent oriental signature. Dark. Mystical. Rich. Heavy. But then some musty truffle comes around the corner and destroys everything. And yet I respect the complete uncompromising nature of this fragrance.
Taste is strange, and fragrance taste even more so. But that's exactly why one should remain honest. Haibah is not a spiritual revelation. No "journey." No olfactory enlightenment for advanced users. It is simply an absurdly overloaded, animalistic, leathery, fruity-smoky oud colossus with the elegance of a gilded sledgehammer. And perhaps therein lies its strange fascination. Because somewhere between fermented fruits, trampled roses, musty leather, truffle madness, and olfactory receptor apocalypse, something truly peculiar emerges: personality. A demanding, loud, completely oversized personality. But at least a real one. My "journey" ended after about four and a half hours. I think it could have accompanied me for days, with a volume that would have eventually made me deaf. I scrubbed my hands and scented myself with my €8 ultra-niche: "Verveine Cédrat | Jeanne en Provence."