Duftwaffe

I have tried several times to condense everything into a statement, but each time I was limited by the maximum character count, so this now seems to be my first comment.
And that for a dupe, strange aftertaste.

Well then, let’s start with why I have so much to write about this fragrance.
Years ago, long before I delved deeply into the topic of perfume - "hey, Le Male smells seductive and is a must-have, One Million is rightly worn by every second person, and Davidoff Cool Water smells like you just stepped out of the shower" - I stumbled through the bathroom at a house party at a good friend's place and was confronted with a jumble of perfume bottles.
Completely overwhelmed as to why someone needs so many perfumes and why there was no Le Male among them, I confronted him. He just laughed and took a bottle from his collection.
It 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 blown away. Excuse the anglicism, but it just fits best. What a fragrance, I couldn’t stop sniffing my wrist.
My then-girlfriend was also very enthusiastic, often catching herself smelling me.
And so it happened again and again that I would wear Herod at his place whenever I had the chance and simply enjoyed the scent.

Years later, when I slowly started acquiring my own “special” perfumes, it was time for Herod to move in with me as well. First as a decant.
The package arrived, I nearly tore it open in the air to get to the long-awaited fragrance as quickly as possible, took it, and sprayed it directly on my wrist - and was confused.
Did it always smell like this? Was this the scent I had fallen in love with years ago? Too bad, it seems my taste has changed after all. It was good, but nowhere near as phenomenal as I remembered.
And somehow, it only lasted a few hours, not like I remembered it lasting all evening.

Then, some time ago, my aforementioned acquaintance visited and went through my fragrances, and he came across the Herod decant. “Cool, Herod! Mine has been empty for a while, can I try it?” Sure, he could. And then it happened: His reaction was identical. He was convinced that it must be a counterfeit, a so-called dupe, and not even a particularly good one.
He ordered a bottle some time later because he was convinced that the original smells different.
No. It didn’t. It smelled very similar and had a very similar performance. We were both overwhelmed. Disappointed.

And that brings me slowly to the actual purpose of this long comment: Dua Fragrances - King of Judea Attar.
I encountered this fragrance here in the forum, extremely critical due to the bad experiences of others with known dupes - to be honest, not specifically with Herod, but just disappointed with dupes in general. Yes, they smell similar, nothing more. They perform worse, like a shadow of the desired scent.
Nevertheless, curiosity and the longing for the past experience won out, which is why I got myself a bottle.
When it arrived, I was initially just surprised at how incredibly cheap and unremarkable the bottle looked. I simply couldn’t connect the bottle with the hoped-for spectacular content; it just looked like a typical generic dupe container to me.
I sprayed it on, and was initially rewarded with a very biting note.
Too soon to sniff, it seems. As this slowly faded, something unexpected happened:
There it was. That was the scent that burst my “The world only needs the 5 known fragrances” bubble.
So I hadn’t been mistaken. The fragrance was that good back then. And King of Judea Attar is still that good.
I am by no means a perfume expert, but a layman who is slowly, bit by bit, discovering the world of scents for himself. So don’t pin me down on specific notes, olfactory perception, or anything like that.
I just wanted to share my little journey with you and let you know that this clone, this dupe, has managed to revive exactly that experience I had the first time I got to smell Herod. Thank you for that, Dua.

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