Duftwaffe

I've tried several times now to put the whole thing into a statement, but have been so limited each time by the maximum character count that the whole thing now seems to become my first comment after all.
And that's for a dupe, weird flavor.

Well then, let's start with why I have so much to write about this fragrance.
Years ago, far before I had dealt with the topic of perfume big - "hey, Le Male smells seductive and you need, One Million wears perfectly rightly every second and Davidoff Cool Water smells freshly showered" - I stumbled at a good friend at a house party through the bathroom and was confronted with a smorgasbord perfume bottles.
Overwhelmed why someone needs so many perfumes and why there is no Le Male, I asked him. He just laughed and took a bottle from collection.
Looked cool, I had to admit. He sprayed it on my neck, on my shirt and on my wrist.
"Smell this."
And for the first time, I smelled Herod. I was flashed. Excuse the Anglicism, but that just sums it up best. What a fragrance, I could not stop sniffing my wrist.
My girlfriend at the time was also heavily enthusiastic, caught himself again and again to smell me.
And so it happened again and again that I put on me on occasion with him Herod and just enjoyed the fragrance.

Years later, when I slowly began to acquire my own, "special" perfumes, it was time that Herod also moved in with me. First once as a filling.
The package arrived, I almost tore it in the air to get as quickly as possible to the much longed for fragrance, took it and sprayed it directly on my wrist - and was confused.
Did it always smell like that? That was the fragrance I was so addicted to years ago? Too bad, since my taste has probably changed then but. He was good, but nowhere near as phenomenal as in my memory.
And somehow he also lasted only for a few hours, and not as in memory the whole evening.

Then when my aforementioned acquaintance visited some time ago and went through my scents he came across the Herod bottling. "Cool, Herod! Mine has been empty for a while, can I have a go?". Of course he could. And then it happened: his reaction was identical. He was convinced that this must be a fake, a so-called dupe, and not even a particularly good one at that.
He ordered a bottle some time later because he was convinced that the original smelled different.
No. It didn't. It smelled very similar and had a very similar performance. We were both overwhelmed. Disappointed.

And that now slowly brings me to the real point and purpose of this long comment: Dua Fragrances - King of Judea Attar.
I came across this fragrance here on the forum, extremely critical of it due to bad experiences of other well-known dupes - granted, not of Herod specifically, but just disappointed in dupes in general. Yes, they smell similar, nothing more. Perform worse, like a shadow of the actually desired fragrance.
Nevertheless, then won but the curiosity and longing for the past experience, which is why I got me a bottle of it.
When this arrived I was at first just amazed at how incredibly cheap and featureless the bottle seemed. I just could not associate the bottle with the hoped for spectacular content, which looked to me just like a typical generic dupe bottle again.
I sprayed it on me, and was initially rewarded with a strong biting note.
Sniffed too early, it seems to me. When this then slowly laid down but something unexpected happened:
There it was. This was the fragrance of my "the world needs only the 5 known fragrances" bubble burst.
So I hadn't been wrong after all. The scent was so good at the time. And Kind of Judea Attar is still that good.
Here speaks by far no perfume expert, but a layman who slowly, peut a peut, discovered the fragrance world for himself. So do not nail me here on certain notes, olfactory perception or the like.
I just wanted to share with you my little journey and just also let you know that this clone, this dupe, has managed to revive me exactly the same experience I had the first time I was allowed to smell Herod. Thanks for this to Dua.

Ultimately, I can only say that I can describe my subjective feeling here. I personally like it by far better than the new Herod batches.