Fera

Imagine a bull’s horn cut down the middle to form two receptacles. Imagine those two half-horns laid out on a pedestal in a palace, filled with civet paste.

That’s how Sultan Qaboos used to store his zabad. He used to dip his hands right into the paste and smear the civet directly onto his armpits. He would then don his robes and apply his legendary oud or his signature rose-oud melange.

I want you to imagine that whirlwind of olfactory rapture, but I know most of us can’t.

It’s an indulgence only someone like the Sultan would partake in. Someone who appreciates how there are deeply-embedded cues in our own psyche that equate animalics with the verve and pulse of life itself. It’s the same reason King Solomon is recorded to have imported civet from Africa, and the aristocracy in ancient cultures carried naked musk pods in their pockets as their perfume.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sultan carried out this ritual before he went to receive Queen Elizabeth. We know it was part of his daily routine.

Few perfumers use real civet, and when they do they’re shy to add more than a symbolic amount. Like with agarwood and musk, there’s a stigma to using the real deal. It smells too……you know… too much like actual civet and not enough like civettone.

Synthetic civet is to civet what musk ketone is to deer musk, jasmophore to jasmine, or Black Agar to agarwood. The one thing the synth subs have in common is how little they resemble the real thing.

Fera is the kind of fragrance the mainstream tries to outlaw from its monoculture because it’s not sweet enough, not gentle enough, not ‘compliant’ enough – smells too much like real civet and even more like oud – i.e. proof that this animalic allure is hardwired in our DNA. That you want to smell it. 

But here’s the thing. They make it sound like these scents should be avoided. Yet for all of civilization, these have been the most sought-after, most expensive aromatics. The most prized because of what they could accomplish in perfumery…

What’s happened is what happened to butter when margarine became all the rage. When tofu patties were said to taste just like grass-fed beef, and chrome-tanned pleather snuck in and kicked out full-grain vegetable-tanned calf hide.

And why not? These alternatives were much cheaper, allowed ridiculous mark-ups, and, more importantly, were patentable.

Fera lets the civet do what it does best, lets it hook up with the aromatics it works wonders with, like making the freshest citrus chords smell ripe and zesty in ways they’d never smell otherwise.

The way civet transmutes the indolic sweetness of a fine jasmine (in this case, juhi absolute) and honeysuckle (the Sultan’s own extract, from who knows how long ago), or how it latches to tuberose, cacao, vanilla, and sandalwood and makes them creamier, smoother.

And then… When it comes to which oud to couple with civet, there’s one clear winner.

There’s no better oud to infuse with civet’s inherent sweetness than Hindi oud. Chinese oud is a close second, but nothing beats what happens to the tangy, zesty, wildflower spices of a good Hindi once civet is done with it.

When you think of Indian oud and animalics and dense, rich flowers like tuberose, you’d expect a certain kind of perfume. But Fera isn’t a heavy fragrance. Full-bodied, exuberant, complex, yes. But it was designed not to be dark or heavy.

I wanted the civet-enhanced spices and mandarin and neroli to dart around the florals and punctuate the core notes of quality agallocha most never talk about – it’s always barnyard, barnyard, barnyard, isn’t it?

But this isn’t just any agallocha distillation, but wild Assam oud infused with Tonkin musk. This unique infusion makes up a quarter of the compound, as its sweet leather-suede aroma, morphed by the finest musk the world has ever known, makes the perfect anchor for the sweetness of civet and its enhancing properties.

Then, to intensify the perfume’s feral pull, there’s a rare combo of wild Nepalese spikenard and costus root (two of the closest plant alternatives to musk, and both regulated), tempered with juniper berries.

In Fera, the more familiar EO DNA got mutated by an unusual cast of aromatics, all entangled in a civet cocktail bubbling with wild Indian oud.

All of that said, let not the name mislead you. Fera is anything but harsh, blunt, or overly animalic.

It showcases what civet does to the aromatics you pair it with and while giving the animalic elements space to work their magic, I’d rank it as the most wearable EO parfum.