Not so (l)oud please...

Something strange happened in Greece during the early '90s. Being polarising by its very own nature, some would call it a study in stupidity and some would call it inspired marketing. Here's how it goes...

One day, some "luminary" from an ad agency discovered or remembered that due to the live cultures it contains, yoghurt is somehow a living thing. So (s)he thought that this was a very cool thing to underline, and a brilliant demonstration of extraordinary wit so as to have the clients impressed. Thus (s)he added it as the tagline to her/his client's next campaign. No matter how stupid it sounded, the bloody thing worked! Until then no one was giving a damn about her/his yoghurt being alive, dead, undead or zombie. But after the first TV spot aired, all yoghurts came suddenly to life overnight. For the next couple of years, the first priority of every dairy was not to convince us that its yoghurts were fresh, smooth and yummy, but that they were alive. And there was a huge brawl about whose yoghurts were more alive than the other's, making me reconsider what biology had taught me back in school, i.e. there's no such thing as more or less alive . There were even jokes made about this madness, including housewives terrified by something living in their fridge, and totally reluctant to open its door and risk being attacked. The whole fad slowly faded away and, our offended intelligence aside, yoghurts returned to being fresh, smooth and yummy.

Its name is "Breath" and the greek text is reading "It breathes life!" I don't know about you, but to me this is a picture to promote a horror movie taking place in Antarctica, not something you eat.

I kept one of these suckers, with a huge "It's alive!" on it, in my fridge for nearly ten years, as a memento of absurdity, and to be absolutely sure that it would finally kick the very own bucket in which it was contained.

I apologise for the seemingly perfume-irrelevant prologue (and I say seemingly because yoghurt is a first-class natural cosmetic and an imaginary perfume note), but doesn't it ring a bell about a kinda bizarre situation happening in perfumery as we speak?

Yes, it's all about oud. I won't pretend that I don't understand what's happening, for I understand very well. What's happening is perfume companies acting like sharks on a frenzy, after smelling some drops of blood (or in this case oud) in the sea of consumers, or, to spare us the simile, like CEOs after hearing some sovereigns jingling on the floor.

I neither like nor dislike oud. As is the case with almost every perfume note, its potential depends greatly on the way it's blended in a composition. I just don't understand what's so exceptional about it. I don't find it to be anything near groundbreaking or unexpendable. OK, it has not been artificially made thus far. So what? Many otherwise expensive brands use synthetic oud smell-alikes. But these are allegedly also very expensive to produce, and what's more, experts say that they can't hold a candle to real natural oud. I'm not an expert, thus I can't verify any of these claims. And I don't find them to be very helpful either. On the contrary, they perplex the whole situation even more, since there's no way to know whether it's oud or "oud" that's contained in a fragrance. But synthetic or not, why is oud threatening to drown us all?

Just out of curiosity and to add some credit to my thesis, I took the time to delve a bit into Parfumo's database. The results exceeded way beyond any expectations I could have possibly had. There are 700(!!!) fragrances not just including oud in their composition, but also including "oud" or any of its variants in their name. There are probably more fragrances with "rose" on their label, but rose is a cornerstone of perfumery for almost 200 years while oud was virtually unknown to western perfumery some years ago. And god knows how many more fragrances feature it in their ingredients, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. After all oud is a perfume note. The problem here is why all these companies seem to feel an overpowering urge to make absolutely clear that oud is contained in their fragrances? Why the don't feel the same urge for any other ingredient? Hmm, let me think...Because the word sells big time and it has become a synonym for big bucks? I guess that in many cases, much more effort has been put into finding an "oud" name for each one of these 700 fragrances, in order to avoid bumping heads with some other one, than in the creation of the perfume itself. And not always successfully, as these sketchy names indicate.

Madly Kenzo Oud Collection (a collection consisting of just one)

City Oud (oud with a preference for growing in concrete)

Aoud Black Candy (rather bitter and probaby poisonous if biten)

Malizia Oud - My First Billion (kinda ambitious this one)

Caviar Oudh-Wood (what millions of people have for breakfast every day)

Oud must be the most celebrated ingredient in perfume history. If I assume that the "oud in the bottle, not on the label" fragrances are approximately equally as many, then we have about 1500 fragrances containing oud. This is roughly 3% of all the fragrances registered in Parfumo's database. With almost every one of them launched in less than 10 years, and perhaps in even lesser than that.

It has become a touchstone and it's combined with every note imagined. Something like a panacea that will transform an otherwise mediocre fragrance into an exceptional specimen of high perfumery. But is this really the case? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think oud has a very certain oriental quality, and it's what could be called a "killer" note, in the sense of being heavy, dense and dominating. And somewhat off-puting for a lot of people I might add. Experimenting is always very welcome in perfumery, but not always perforce worthy. To be honest, most of the oud fragrances that I've tested, were good but not exceptional or something I'd buy hands down. So I'm still unable to understand what's the big deal, other than a hugely successful trend, that is.

But being true to my old-fashioned way of thinking, I'd like to include some dwindling ethics here. Although they don't make a fragrance smell any better, they make people sleep better at night. So I wonder if the annual production of oud essential oil is enough to suffice for all these fragrances using it. And if it is indeed, for how long?

According to Wikipedia, the current global market for agarwood is estimated to be in the range of US$ 6-8 billion and is growing rapidly. But in the same time, one of the main reasons for the relative rarity and high cost of agarwood is the depletion of the wild resource. Since 1995 Aquilaria malaccensis, the primary source, has been listed in Appendix II (potentially threatened species) by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. In 2004 all Aquilaria species were listed in Appendix II; however, a number of countries have outstanding reservations regarding that listing.

I am the first to admit that Wikipedia articles are not irrefutable evangels, but in this case I don't think that the presented facts are false or exaggerated. Given that, doesn't it look as if IFRA and EU ingredient restrictions have "hypocrisy" written all over them? Or is it just me again, kvetching for no reason? Is it more important to restrict or ban the use of an ingredient that triggered a mild allergic reaction to 3 people out of 1000, or of an ingredient whose unscrupulous use is threatening a flora species with extinction?

Since oud resin is actually the product of a mould infection, this automatically means that it can be harvested only from trees that are literally sick. So, what happens when these trees are stubborn and refuse to get sick and co-operate with humans and their fundamental need to smell exotic? This happens...

Which results in this...

Or, depending on how greedy we woke this morning, in this...

I wouldn't be surprised if someone would use an argument the likes of "Oh, these poor trees are so sick! Let's put them out of their misery. Let's make some expensive chairs of them.", to exploit these poor fellas to the utmost degree, after their oud resin production capability was depleted. Forgetting very conveniently that we were the ones that got them sick in the first place.

Fanaticism in any field was never my game, thus I'm by no means against using natural resources, as long as they're not used to serve only our vanity and nothing else.

Yes, yes, I know...My way of thinking is simple and naive and unproductive and not to be taken seriously, cause I'm a cantankerous old man who lives in the past. But I also know that history has tried to teach us that every time the wealthy West "discovers" an "exotic" whatnot, then its countdown to extinction clock starts ticking. But it seems that many people played hooky during this class. Perhaps trying to avoid becoming cantankerous old men.

Frenzies were never good, except for those who stashed the monies that feeded them. But these people were always a very few "chosen" ones, while the rest were usually elbowing each other in their struggle to become the frenetic tinders that fuelled the frenzy.

But the whole thing could be of some use eventually. To paraphrase a well known saying, I'll say that every oud has a silver lining, since there's always a chance that oud will dethrone all these sweety-cuddly-candy scents that have brought me to the doorstep of diabetes and are one of the reasons that many magnificent fragrances are gone forever. But don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean that I'd like an oud-dominated perfume world. It just means that I'd be satisfied with a lesser evil...

P.S. : Montale has 44 out of 104 fragrances blaring their oudness. I wonder why they haven't changed the name into Moudale yet...