{"id":1072,"date":"2013-09-20T13:44:01","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T20:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2013-09-20T13:46:40","modified_gmt":"2013-09-20T20:46:40","slug":"reblog-bigger-stink-means-higher-price-as-men-crave-rare-oud-fragrance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/reblog-bigger-stink-means-higher-price-as-men-crave-rare-oud-fragrance\/","title":{"rendered":"Reblog – Bigger Stink Means Higher Price as Men Crave Rare Oud Fragrance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PK Perfumes’ \u00a0“Dirty Rose Oud Extreme” fragrance is close to being out,<\/h1>\n

and I couldn’t help but re-post this great story about Oud…<\/h2>\n

Dirty Rose Oud Extreme uses a blend of real oud and reconstituted \u00a0oud as a 20% portion of Dirty Rose Oud Extreme.<\/h2>\n

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Bigger Stink Means Higher Price as Men Crave Rare Oud Fragrance<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
By\u00a0Susan Hack\u00a0–\u00a0Sep 18, 2013 9:00 PM PT<\/cite><\/div>\n
Bloomberg Pursuits Magazine<\/div>\n
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For centuries, scent hunters have indiscriminately cut down old-growth forests in search of the resin produced by wild Aquilaria trees, which is burned as incense, carved into ritual objects and distilled into oud — the most valuable natural oil on earth. Photograph: Mitchell Feinberg\/Bloomberg Pursuits<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The first time Mike Perez wore dehn al-oud — an essential oil distilled from the resin of Asian Aquilaria trees — he was so appalled by the smell that he hid inside his home.<\/p>\n

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\"Kilian<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Musk Oud by Kilian. Photograph: Courtesy of Kilian<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Yves<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

M7 Oud Absolu by Yves Saint Laurent. Photograph: Courtesy of YSL<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI put on way too much, and frankly, it smelled like animal butt,\u201d says Perez, a 42-year-old manager for Barclay\u2019s Real Estate Group in Miami.<\/p>\n

Fragrances reveal their true nature as they evaporate on the skin, Bloomberg Pursuits\u00a0magazine will report in its Autumn 2013 issue, so Perez resisted the temptation to wash.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe barnyard note started changing into something intensely woody, damp and complex,\u201d recalls the fragrance enthusiast, who has a collection of almost 1,500 scents. \u201cIt lasted 24 hours, and by then, I understood why some have described oud as transcendent. I invited a friend over to try a tiny swipe; after the initial shock, he became emotional as it evoked memories of a boyhood vacation by a lake and the smell of his skin and bathing suit and even the dock drying in the summer sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akin to such potent, primeval scents as ambergris and Himalayan deer musk, oud (the name means wood in Arabic) is an alluring mystery even to those who know it well. Used by the Ancient Egyptians for embalming and mentioned in the Bible\u2019s Song of Solomon, the resin is produced by a rare and little-understood defense mechanism: When disease-carrying microbes breach the trunk of an Aquilaria tree, a dark and extremely aromatic resin is secreted, invisible beneath the outer bark.<\/p>\n

Burned as Incense<\/h2>\n

For reasons still unknown to science, fewer than 2 percent of wild Aquilaria trees ever produce resin. For centuries, scent hunters have indiscriminately cut down old-growth forests in search of the substance, which is burned as incense, carved into ritual objects or distilled into the most valuable natural oil on earth.<\/p>\n

Half a teaspoon of oud oil made from 100-year-old trees for Oman\u2019s Sultan Qaboos in 1982 sold to a private collector in 2012 for $7,000. In China, demand for top-quality resin has pushed prices as high as $300,000 per kilogram. Despite a ban\u00a0on the harvesting of wild Aquilaria by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, such pricing has triggered widespread poaching and a race to perfect sustainable techniques for artificially infecting farmed trees.<\/p>\n

Smell of Money<\/h2>\n

To the $31.6 billion fragrance industry, oud and its aficionados smell like one thing: money. \u00a0Sales\u00a0of oud fragrances rose 34 percent in 2012, according to New York-based consumer research firm NPD Group Inc. Such scents were virtually unheard of in the global market before 2002, when Yves Saint Laurent\u00a0released Tom Ford’s\u00a0M7, widely acknowledged\u00a0as the first Western oud fragrance.<\/p>\n

Today, out of more than a thousand new scents released annually, one in eight contains oud. The developing taste for oud reflects \u201ctrends for intense, intriguing, daring scents that tap into a desire to travel and experience other cultures,\u201d fragrance historian Elena Vosnaki\u00a0says, and has helped drive sales of prestige male fragrances in the U.S. alone to $953 million. In the past year, Armani, Dior, Ferrari and even the Body Shop have all jumped on the bandwagon.<\/p>\n

Perfumer Kilian Hennessy — the cognac heir who introduced Musk Oud, the latest in his line of oud fragrances, in June under the By Killian\u00a0label — caught the bug on a 2008 trip to Dubai, where oud incense wafting through malls, mosques and hotel lobbies has become as signature a scent as lavender is to Grasse, France.<\/p>\n

\u2018Weapon of Seduction\u2019<\/h2>\n

\u201cTo Westerners, men\u2019s fragrance is a weapon of seduction,\u201d Hennessy says. \u201cBut to people in the Arab Gulf, oud is comforting, part of their olfactory world and an envelope in which they feel protected.\u201d The oud used in all By Kilian fragrances is synthetic, bioengineered to approximate the real deal. That said, \u201cI have never smelled a synthetic oud that re-creates the complexity and intensity of the real one,\u201d Hennessy says.<\/p>\n

According to Robert Blanchette, a forest pathologist at the University of Minnesota, the scent released by the highest-grade natural oud oils comprises more than 150 separate compounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with mass spectrometry and gas chromatography, we still don\u2019t have the complete signature,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Blanchette, who has spent two decades investigating Aquilaria trees in conjunction with the Amsterdam-based Rainforest Project\u00a0foundation, has patented a technique to artificially infect saplings, 100 percent of which go on to produce resin, although it\u2019s less dense than that of centuries-old trees.<\/p>\n

Chemical Signature<\/h2>\n

\u201cThe chemical signature is very close, and our hope is that in the future, it will become a viable source,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, \u201charvesting wild trees will eventually kill oud, because of the loss of biodiversity,\u201d says Ensar, an online purveyor of organic oud who declines to reveal his full name and who spends much of the year in Asia\u00a0seeking out the best resin.<\/p>\n

\u201cAquilaria trees have to fight disease and sometimes die for oud to come into existence,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to cry when I cut down a farmer\u2019s 60-year-old tree in Thailand\u00a0that was fully loaded with resin. It\u2019s all extremely existential.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOud takes a commitment, both financially and in the way you wear it,\u201d Barclay\u2019s Perez says. \u201cI wear it only on special occasions and never to the office. But most of the time, I wear it for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PK Perfumes’ \u00a0“Dirty Rose Oud Extreme” fragrance is close to being out, and I couldn’t help but re-post this great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.simple.biz\/pkperfumes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}