Meaning of "Arabian Perfumes"

There's two types of "Arabian Perfumes".

Type 1: Perfumes that feature scent profiles traditionally enjoyed in Arabia and neighboring regions. There's musk, rose, saffron, oud, etc..

Type 2: Cheap dupes that replicate the scents of expensive designer/niche western perfumes for a cheaper price.

Type 2 kinda gives a bad connotation to the term "Arab Perfumes", even though it's actually "western perfumes cloned in an Arab country".

I'd like to talk a little about Type 1 cause I feel many people aren't very familiar with traditional Arab perfumery. Here's some brands that specialize in that kind of scent family.

Amouage is a house that features a lot of such scents. They're from Oman and their fragrances are inspired by traditional Arabian perfumery. Some good examples are Jubilation Man, Lyric Woman, Epic Man/Woman, Memoir Man/Woman, etc.. They do often experiment though, combining Arabian and french perfumery and often coming up with artistic (and even avant-garde) fragrances.

OmanLuxury is another good house from Oman.

Arabian Oud is a house that's very big in the middle east despite being less known in the west.

Abdul Samad al-Qurashi (ASQ) has some pretty good traditional stuff too.

Swiss Arabian has lots of good stuff for affordable prices, but they also do a lot of western dupes, so you would need to know which is which.

Other mainstream houses do occasionally dabble in such style too. Some examples are Alexandria 2 and Luxor by Xerjoff, Oud Satin Mood by MFK, Oud Ispahan by Dior, Oud for Greatness by Initio, Rose d'Arabie by Armani, etc..

Note that when making Oud scents, western houses often tend to go for "westernized" oud, which is basically synthetic oud that smells more "sanitized" than real oud, and even then it's often not too dominant in the scent. This is because the middle Eastern style is not always appealing to many people in the western world. Examples are Royal Oud by Creed and Oud Wood by Tom Ford. There are exceptions though, of course. The house of Frederic Malle, for examples, has a lot of very "middle Eastern" scent profiles in their catalog. Niche houses are more likely to make scents that smell like authentic middle Eastern scents.

Among the most common types of "oriental" perfumes by western houses are:

- The famous Rose-Oud combo (such as Xerjoff Alexandria 2 and MFK oud satin mood)

- The Saffron-Oud combo (Initio Oud For Greatness and PdM Haltane)

- The Raspberry-Oud combo (LV Ombre Nomade, The Moon by Frederic Malle)

- The Spicy Oriental (Penhaligon's Halfeti, Ambre Sultan by Serge Lutens).

In Arabian perfume houses, there is also a heavy use of musk and "bakhoor" (incense, often made with resins like frankincense and Myrrh, or oud).

Summary:

For "sanitized" oriental scents made to appeal to western taste, check brands like Initio, Tom Ford, and other western houses.

Some brands that often/occasionally make "middle Eastern" scents include Xerjoff and Frederic Malle, among many.

For artistic scents inspired by and based on Arabian perfumery, there's Amouage and OmanLuxury. Most of their fragrances have an evident middle eastern DNA.

For the most traditional stuff, I'd say that Arabian Oud and Abdul Samad al-Qurashi (ASQ) are worth exploring.

Final note: Traditional arabian perfumery is a vast term. It's not all oud, rose and musk. It's a world of fragrances on it's oil. And don't get me started on Attars, fragrance oils and the incense-oil-fragrance combo/ritual.

Please let me know if you find this informative, and correct me if I'm wrong.