Zam Zam
Areej le Doré (2022)

Although this attar is said to be the most complex and perfumey of the entire collection, I personally don’t perceive it as such. Zam Zam features a fiercely medicinal saffron distillation mixed into the vintage sandalwood used throughout the collection, and oddly, I find that the two materials bring out the worst in each other. The high-toned wood esters fizzing at the top of the sandalwood accentuate the iodine-like properties of the saffron, so what I mostly smell is a slightly pitchy, medicinal accord that is too astringent to allow me to relax into the experience. Once the vaporousness of the topnotes settle, the sandalwood heart notes bank everything down in a fine, brown layer of woody warmth, which in turn allows the saffron to play more of its traditional ‘exoticizing’ role for the sweet, buttery amber-woods. I don’t smell anything particularly floral. The saffron, a ferociously strong material, is able to keep a vein of something metallic coursing through the creaminess from top to toe, like a flash of electricity. I find it Zam Zam striking, but angular and again, simpler than its billing suggests.