Oumma

Stéphane Humbert Lucas describes Oumma as a study of the contrasts of agarwood (oud), a substance he views with mystical reverence. A single sniff of Oumma can more than explain why: based around the finest Burmese oud and buttressed by Moroccan Rose, Egyptian jasmine and Peruvian Balsam, this fragrance is drawn from the rarest sources on the planet and yet, it hardly feels earthly at all. Instead, Oumma seems to rise from the ground, stretching out each extraordinary facet of its central ingredient until the smoky, spicy wood and subtly sharp, medicinal aphrodisiac properties that make up the duality of oud seem to exist simultaneously, suspended in mid-air. Simply put, Oumma is a fragrance that makes you look to the heavens.

A dry, spicy rose and elegantly savory saffron hover beneath, but this is nothing like the lavish-yet-rote oud-rose pairings widely available elsewhere. Rather, these exceptional ingredients, each deserving of a starring role in a different composition, combine with smoke-saturated cade ash to build the earthly pyre from which this singularly extraordinary oud might ascend even higher.

Even the bottle itself seems prepared to leave the ground: shiny and silver, as bright and reflective as the mid-day sky, finished with a polished silver cap and a Swarovski “diamond” placed on the crown. We've never experienced an oud quite like this.

Egyptian jasmine, Moroccan rose, Peruvian balsam, balsam tolu, ashes of cade, Burmese oud, nagarmotha.