Shei-du-na. Enunciate each syllable and all the right associations come to mind: she, sheikh, dunes. In his 1992 novel The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje mentions that sand dunes in the Sahara resemble the dips and hollows of a woman’s back. Sheiduna perfectly captures that sense of duality between two things that look the same and yet are not the same – the shadowed softness of a woman’s hip and the dusty angularity of a wind-sharpened dune.
The opening is a plume of smoke and tangerine peel set inside a golden, radiant cloud of resins that swirls around the wearer like a sand storm. Out of this expansive blur of sparkling particles emerges a spicy clove note that gives the fragrance a subtle vintage Opium hue. A rich rose weaves in and out of this fuzzy haze of amber and spices, like the orange-red glow of lighthouse in thick fog. It’s this seamless shifting between dry, spicy radiance and soft, sweet florals and vanilla that makes Sheiduna so interesting – and so difficult to define. We’d sum it up by saying it’s like breathing in the arid air of the desert while nuzzling the neck of an exotically perfumed woman.
