Champa Attar
Areej le Doré (2022)

Champa attar is the most famous floral attar ‘type’ from India, possibly popularized beyond the borders of India by its use in nag champa agarbatti (Indian incense sticks), shampoo, and soaps. Distilled from the champaca flower, a bright yellow flower revered across the Indian subcontinent and much of tropical Asia as a symbol of sacred femininity, champaca tends to smell rich and creamy, similar in profile to magnolia, but with a denser, muskier body weight, and hints of bubblegum, green apple peel, mint, and apricot. Though champaca can be quite musky at times, it is traditionally associated with cleanliness. In fact, the word ‘champa’ gave rise to the word ‘shampoo’ by way of the Sanskrit word for champaca, ‘champo’, which means ‘to massage’.

This particular Champa attar smells (typically for champaca) headily botanical, with a sharp green tea element freshened with pops of mint, grass, wood, and something akin to furniture polish. You can tell that it is a floral – something about the heady, steamy atmosphere – yet it doesn’t smell particularly fruity, bright, or feminine in the way you think an attar squeezed from a yellow flower is going to.

I pick up on an intense ‘darkly stewed tea’ element, with a sweet, powdered incense quality in the background, although this impression could be the automatic linking my brain does between the scent of traditional agarbatti and actual champaca. Although this doesn’t make much sense, since most Nag Champa on the market these days haven’t been within 100 km of real champaca, the association lingers, rendering this attar distinctly Indian in character.

The most interesting part of Champa is when it starts to degrade on the skin. By which I mean the yellow flower itself begins to wilt into a damp, almost fetid organic soup of crushed stamens and soggy stems. It smells musky in a very natural, attractive kind of way – like a young woman, freshly washed head to toe in Timoteí, rolling around in wildflowers and chamomile buds, only to emerge hours later stained with plant juice and soaked in that fresh-sweet-salty sweat that only the very young seem to produce. This ‘decaying at the edges’ aspect – the slight tip of the hat towards the barnyard floor – smells freakishly sensual, mostly because it is so clearly natural in origin. Whoever thinks that flowers can’t smell anything other than sweet or clean should smell this.

After this, there is a brief detour into jasmine-like territory, with a sour, plasticky edge I associate with Sambac at the end of its natural life. Sometimes champaca can smell a little like jasmine, though, only a bit coarser and not as ‘clear’. If you’ve ever smelled the underside of your wrist after removing a rubber watch at the end of a hot day, you’ll know what this stage of Champa smells like (only mixed with something vaguely floral). Champa winds up, about two hours later, in pure sandalwood territory.

A thoroughly disappointing outing from Areej le Dore, and for fragrances in general. I'll write one review and post it on all six attars, since I was foolish enough to buy the whole set.

The scents...not even going to say much about them. Whatever the flower is as indicated in the name is what you get. If, for instance, you've smelled rose absolute, then Gulab smells like that, slightly diluted with the sandalwood base. They are all very potent straight from the bottle, and some, like Champa, to a nauseating degree. Applying to the skin and letting it die down a bit helps with this, but still leaves you with an underwhelming, single note. They're very boring across the board. The sandalwood oil is weak, and lasts but a mere 2-3 hours. I applied these mostly to the top of my hand to avoid any surface wear. The site, of course, advertises 12+ hours. The others last longer, but nowhere near advertised.

Aside from the weak and boring scents presented, the entire approach to this release is disappointing, and feels like a con. The descriptions are full of immature mumbo jumbo like descriptions of "whipped cream and bananas". They speak of the eternal journey you may go on when the indolic notes caress your cilia. Common with fragrance marketing of course, but poorly executed, like a Fragrantica review.

But wait, there's more! The drivel relating to traditional copper deg distillation and amount of petals required, etc, just doesn't really matter when you release something this unimaginative. These are supposed to be the ingredients that a perfumer uses to make a fragrance. In that regard, I have tried using them to add a note to a different fragrance, for instance placing some oil on my skin and then spraying a Gulf Collection Roja on top. It seems to have minimal effect, and certainly not worth having it in your collection for that. Otherwise, there is no use for these.

Further, we see Areej le Dore starting to use other lowly tactics to market. If you've ever purchased clothing from luxury brands, you will likely have seen the tag that says something to the effect of, "each garment possesses individual characteristics that make it unique. Variations in coloring and stitching are what make these garments stand out." Right. Marketing jargon to consumer translation is "we have poor production and quality control measures in place, and refuse to lose a dime on bad products that make it through, despite the exorbitant markups." In this case, it applies to the bottles, which may or may not have air bubbles in them. All of a sudden, that's an art piece. Sorry Adam, these Chinese glass bottles are not art pieces. The cheap sticker labels they placed on them are already peeling straight out of the package.

This is an enormous strike against the brand. Realistically speaking, several Areej le Dore fragrances aren't even that great. The compositions and progressions are interesting, and the quality of the ingredients is superb. I certainly appreciate that aspect. But rarely have I said "this smells amazing". The oud releases from the brand, however, are impeccable if one enjoys that family of scents.

The lids on these attars sure are nice, though.