The House of Oud
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The ginger-tangerine combination arrives with immediate snap—bright citrus amplified by warming spice, almost peppery in its assault. Within moments you're aware this won't be a demure opening; it announces itself with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what they're doing.
As the volatility settles, tuberose and ylang-ylang emerge from beneath the spice, creamy and faintly indolic, yet never allowed to overwhelm because that candied ginger note keeps surfacing, preventing the florals from becoming cloying. The fragrance becomes almost sensual here—warm, skin-like, but with an undertow of spiced complexity that keeps it intriguing rather than simply pretty.
Vanilla and musk form a soft, creamy base, but this isn't a straight descent into gourmand comfort. Echoes of that candied ginger persist, and the woody notes provide structure—a slightly austere skeleton beneath the sweetness, ensuring the drydown remains sophisticated rather than collapsing into pure sugar.
Ruby Red Red Storm arrives with the temperament of its name—a fragrance that refuses to whisper. Maurizio Cerizza has constructed something deliberately voluptuous here, a composition where ginger becomes the connective tissue binding together honeyed florals and creamy vanilla into something that reads neither wholly gourmand nor purely spiced floral, but rather a restless hybrid of both.
The ginger is the revelatory choice. Rather than allowing it to fade into the background after the opening flourish, Cerizza threads it throughout—raw and peppery in the top notes, then softening into the candied, almost honeyed iteration in the base. This repetition creates an obsessive quality, as though the fragrance is circling back to worry at the same provocative idea repeatedly. The tuberose and ylang-ylang heart, those creamy, indolic florals, would ordinarily dominate, but here they're tempered by that persistent spice, prevented from becoming headily narcotic. There's instead a kind of sophisticated restraint, a floral sweetness that's been sharpened with a blade.
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4.0/5 (117)