Tom Ford Oud Voyager

Oud Wood, released in the first Private Blend wave in 2007, is the fragrance that taught a generation of Western wearers what oud could smell like once it had been sanded down and made wearable. Oud Voyager is one of the newest entries in that same family and takes a deliberately different route. Tom Ford frames it as a journey through time in which past, present and future meet, joining ancient oud to a futuristic floral. Strip away the copy and the genuinely interesting part is the construction, because this is an oud built around flowers rather than around spice or smoke.

Geranium absolute leads, green and rosy and faintly metallic, and it is followed by what the house calls a Living Red Peony accord, a reconstruction rather than a natural extract, since peony yields no usable oil of its own. Osmanthus adds an apricot-and-leather nuance that bridges the floral and woody halves. The oud itself appears twice: as a floral oud tri-distillate, a treatment that strips out much of the barnyard character and leaves the resinous sweetness behind, and as oud proper in the base. Cypriol underneath is the quiet workhorse, dry and smoky and faintly earthy, and it is what stops the flowers turning powdery.

Tom Ford does not publicly credit its perfumers, so this description stays with what the house itself states about the materials rather than attributing the work to anyone.

It is a formal fragrance and an expensive-smelling one. It reads best after dark and in cooler air, so a Cape winter evening suits it far better than a humid afternoon on the coast, where the floral oud can tip towards sweetness. It is also among the more convincingly unisex things in the Private Blend range, because the peony and geranium accord cuts straight across the usual divide.

Performance is strong, which the concentration ought to guarantee. Ten hours on skin is achievable and eight is routine, three of those projecting confidently, and the cypriol and oud base persists on clothing well beyond that. Two sprays are enough. Because it is a recent release, there is no long reformulation history to weigh up yet.