Best Oud for Greatness Neo by Initio Parfums Prives Alternatives & Similar Perfumes

August 1508, Lopud Island, Adriatic Sea

A sunny island in the Adriatic, a small harbour with stone houses and fig trees. Across the verdant Mediterranean hills sprawls an aromatic landscape of cypress stands, pine, rosemary, thyme — and olive groves with their subtle, nutty scent.

Ahhh cedar. Old school floors, air freshener in the downstairs loo with a top note of disinfectant. Yeah right.

This delicious fragrance encapsulates the living heart of the forest with lingering and enigmatic essence of the Great Bear Rainforest®.

With sustainably sourced ingredients from within its bosom that help maintain this breathtaking but threatened environment, its wonderful wildlife and its ancient peoples.

Does it pack a punch? Do bears...?

Blackish green, glistening and cool - like dragon's scales. An oakmoss beast.

Drakon is a full-on vintage fougere in a style we thought was extinct, appearing only in perfume legends. It's a bitter, powdery green leather which starts with punchy betel leaves, then slides into a resinous fir/cypress maze, finally coiling up on a bed of oakmoss.

Mountain air infused with juniper settles over an ancient coniferous forest. Orris and white musk mesh with balsam fir to create a cold, luminous finish.

Perfumer: Cyrill Rolland

An interpretation of the winter solstice brightening into spring, the whisper of growth beneath the melting snow. The cold twang of grapefruit sparks against the heat of Szechuan pepper, while geranium’s complex rosy-minty profile deepens the rawness of hemp, vetiver and leather. 

For their 7th fragrance, Olfactive Studio have taken inspiration from a photograph of the famous Sheats-Goldstein house in L.A. Built in the 1960s by architect John Lautner the house is built into the hillside, creating a seamless link between the natural environment and a man-made structure.

Panorama opens with an unusual savoury accord of spicy wasabi, creating a hot haze that shimmers over a lush canopy of cut grass, bamboo and lemon.

Bright fig illuminates the densely green undergrowth before fading into a smooth warm base of myrrh and labdanum whilst fir balsam echoes the urban rainforest of the opening notes.

Panorama, an olfactory view like no other.

You emerge from a Siberian pine forest to discover a treat: ripe raspberries growing in abundance in the brambles. In one of those sacred moments of serendipity, the smell of the rose you’re playfully wearing as a boutonnière swirls in the air with the snap of the evergreen trees and the tart syrup-sweetness of the raspberries.

The tragic water spirit moves between rivers and seas, luring the man who has wronged her to his last sleep. Rusalka’s Embrace embodies the final breath before the depths close in: the slow sway of seaweed, a gasp of peppermint and pine, the frankincense waft of propolis, the clammy musk of drowned skin, and all the flowers he never lived to smell.

Stone Cap: 100% blue calcite

Tonnerre, originally called 1805 - the year in which Nelson both won the Battle of Trafalgar and lost his life: The year in which Sir Francis Beaufort introduced his ‘wind force scale’.

The scent imagines moments within the battle itself.  Powerful accords of smoke, gunpowder, blood and brandy combine with sea spray and a penetrating citrus note. The fragrance is singularly bold in its composition, yet ultimately refined, provocative and unique.

An immersive fougere that storms your senses with a muscular version of the great outdoors. Hallucinogenic wormwood takes the reins of a wild gallop through fir, cedarwood and tobacco. The fierce greenness is cushioned by a plush and saturated musk.