Somehow they’ve alluded me. I’ve adored Frederic Malle for his style, creative mind but also his fantastic collection of fragrances.
I own Vetiver Extraordinaire, which gave me a belief in the idea of a work fragrance. I also wear Musc Ravageur specifically for when I know I’m going to be around a crowd of people. It is my most complimented fragrance by far and the only that I’ve seen cause what I would call an “animalic reaction” in another person.
But recently I’ve discovered two new loves as I now have The Moon & Dawn from the Desert Gems collection. Two potent beasts that showcase oud in a mercurial manner that still has me scratching my head as to how they were put together.
Dawn & the Wizardry of Incense
Dawn truly feels like the break of day in olfactory form. Its taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that I am a lover of incense. When chatting with my friends about what I love to wear, I always describe my favorite scents as dark and mysterious. I want to be the guy across the room whom makes others wonder, “What exactly does he do?”
Dawn opens sharp, almost piercing at first, a clash of incense and oud that demands attention immediately. It definitely doesn’t whisper and it doesn’t creep in, rather it declares itself. Yet, after that first dramatic entrance, it evolves into something smoother, resinous, almost serene that lasts for a good 12 hours. My first wear I couldn’t quite understand where the name comes from but after continued wears, it truly does feel like 15 minutes before the sun rises. The image I have in my head is the beautiful scene near the end of Sinners where the sun begins to rise. It’s not “crowd pleasing” in the conventional sense but more regal, distant, & magnetic. Wearing it feels less like putting on a fragrance and more like cloaking yourself in an enigma that you yourself can’t even figure out.
A Devilish Dance of Fruit & Oud with The Moon
The Moon, by contrast, is the opposite kind of drama. This fragrance carries the aura of midnight mystery. Its oud is plush and fruit-touched, softened by the sweetness of red berries and a luminous rose that seems to float above the darker notes. There’s a tension in it — brightness and shadow playing off one another — and that tension is exactly what makes it so addictive. It smells deep. If Dawn is ceremonial, The Moon is decadent. It lingers in the air with a kind of opulence that feels almost illicit, like being caught in something you shouldn’t be but don’t want to leave.
What fascinates me most is how both of these fragrances, built around oud, manage to avoid cliché. They don’t fall into the trap of being “oud bombs” in the way so many fragrances in the niche world do. They both have their own character and exist as interesting interpretations of a complex note. One day The Moon is lush rose and berries with a backdrop of oud. Another day it’s almost entirely smoky, its sweetness eclipsed. Dawn, too, behaves like this — sometimes ascetic, all incense and dryness; other times warm, smooth, almost spiritual.
They feel like opposites, yet together they sketch out the duality of oud itself: austere and lavish, sharp and soft, sunlit and shadowed. They’re not just perfumes in the Desert Gems collection. These are works of art and reminders of why Frederic Malle remains one of the few houses that can still make me stop, question, and fall in love with fragrance all over again.