A good starting point, if it is blended with other ingredients, is to choose from your favourite florals, woody or even fruity notes. The scent story finishes with a base of benzoin Siam, Mysore sandalwood, Styrax, and of course, precious oud.

Its intoxicating muskiness can be quite potent, and it’s been used for centuries in India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. We then cross referenced our expert-recommended picks with top-rated options that have garnered five-star reviews or top honors from our staff. Essentially, Malle operates like an editor, allowing the perfumers licence to explore and compose without any financial or creative limitations.

It’s an easy-to-wear fragrance that would work equally well in the daytime at the office as going out for drinks in the evening. Keep reading for everything you need to know about oud, straight from perfumers Frank Voelkl and Jacques Huclier. Celebrating the first anniversary of the line’s relaunch, three new oud-based fragrances have been added to the collection; each exploring a different shade of this multi-faceted ingredient.

Formulated by Ormonde Jayne founder Linda Pilkington, the standout scent, in our opinion, is Ormonde Elixir, based on the original Ormonde Man with its forests of hemlock and cedar but obviously updated with the animalistic spice of the precious oud ingredient.

Confident and proud, the lavish Ralph Lauren Polo Supreme Oud makes its mark as a classic gentlemen’s scent. Instead of taking centre stage and enveloping the wearer in a dark cloak of leathery, earthy spices, it has an ‘easy-to-wear’ and more subtle effect.

A heady middle of green and spicy cannabis alongside saffron and nutmeg follows, but it's all about the base with this one, which features a lingering trail of pure oud oil, woody notes, musk and cedar wood. Of course, I wasn't expecting to like it, which made it all the more interesting when I found that for the first time, I wasn't put off at first sniff. It’s true that a huge chunk of oud products are tailored towards the male population, but it can be a unisex fragrance. Having walked in those scented footsteps, I can’t help but feel the enchantment of this aromatic adventure.It has bite (thanks to the citrus fruits) but dries down to a mellow spin on oud, achieved through the Earl Grey tea facets of the bergamot and cedarwood, which is dry, intensely woody and gives the brambly aspect in the base of the fragrance. Created by renowned perfumers Maurice Roucel and Pierre-Constantin Guiros in 2019, The Other Side Of Oud is the newest addition to the noble and lauded Oud Collection of fine fragrances from this historic perfume house. A single perfume can smell different on everyone who wears it, despite smelling the same in the bottle.