Local Treasures: Dr. Badih al-Droubi on the Perfumes of the Gulf and the Levant
Another instalment of our connoisseur's column, in Dr. al-Droubi's own words.
There is a quiet snobbery in the fragrance world that assumes the great houses must be European. I understand where it comes from, and I have owned my share of French bottles. But I want to push back on it, because some of the most soulful perfumery I have ever encountered was made within a few hundred kilometres of where I grew up. The Gulf and the Levant have been blending scent for far longer than Paris has, and the tradition here is not a museum piece โ it is alive and, in places, genuinely innovating.
Let me take you through how I think about local perfumery, region by region.
The Gulf: oud as a mother tongue
In the Emirates, in Oman, in Saudi Arabia, oud is not an exotic note โ it is the grammar of the entire language. Walk through any souk and you will smell dehn al oud (pure oud oil), mukhallat (hand-blended attars), and bakhoor (scented wood for burning) layered into the very air.
What I admire most about the best Gulf houses is their patience. A serious mukhallat is not designed to impress a stranger across a room in the first thirty seconds, the way a Western designer scent is engineered to. It is designed to unfold over an entire evening, to be noticed by the people who sit close to you, to become part of the memory of a gathering. That is a different philosophy of perfume entirely โ intimacy over projection โ and once you understand it, the cheap, loud stuff starts to feel a little vulgar.
When I judge a Gulf oud blend, I look for three things: the quality of the raw oud (is it real and well-aged, or a thin synthetic?), the restraint of the sweetener (a little honey or rose is elegant; a flood of it is a cover-up), and the length of the dry-down (a great mukhallat is still whispering on your wrist the next morning).
The Levant: the forgotten art of the flower
If the Gulf speaks in wood, the Levant speaks in flowers โ and this is the tradition closest to my own heart. Damascus rose, jasmine, orange blossom, and the green bite of fig leaf: these were the materials of the gardens I knew as a child. Levantine perfumery at its best has a freshness and a melancholy to it, a sense of a cool courtyard in the heat of the afternoon.
It is a fragile tradition, and parts of it have been disrupted, which makes the houses still carrying it forward all the more precious. When I find a contemporary blend that captures that dewy, slightly bittersweet floral character without drowning it in modern sweetness, I buy two bottles โ one to wear and one to keep.
Where Velmoralz fits
I am candid about my affection for this house, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt. What drew me to Velmoralz was that it refuses to choose sides in the old argument between East and West. Oud Maracuja is the clearest example โ it takes the Gulf's mother tongue, oud, and lets a bright tropical fruit speak over it, which is something neither a traditional mukhallat nor a French designer would dare. It is local in its bones and modern in its attitude.
A word on the designer comparison
Newcomers often arrive at local perfumery straight from the designer counter, with a bottle of Dior Sauvage as their only reference. That is fine โ it is an honest starting point, and Sauvage is a genuinely competent fragrance. But I would gently warn against judging an Arabian mukhallat by Sauvage's rules. Sauvage is built for instant, public impact; a fine local blend is built for slow, private depth. Asking one to behave like the other is like asking a poem to be a billboard. Learn to appreciate each on its own terms, and your nose โ and your collection โ will be richer for it.
My advice to the beginner
Start with a single, good mukhallat and a single, good floral attar. Wear each for a week. Pay attention not to the first impression but to how the scent makes you feel by the end of the day. Local perfumery is not about turning heads; it is about becoming yourself, more concentrated. Once you understand that, you will never look at a shelf of identical designer bottles quite the same way again.
Dr. Badih Burhan al-Droubi (an Arabic name also transliterated Badee or Bade' al-Droubi; b. 1966, Adra) is a perfume enthusiast and longtime supporter of Velmoralz. His reviews are his own and published unedited.
