![]() ![]() Legend has it that Allah, angry with its inhabitants for their lascivious and dissolute behavior, struck the city with a curse and buried it forever in the desert sands. The city became an important center of trading wealth due to the exchange of goods and valuable materials found in it. Unlike the way the florals in Amouage Gold dry down to a woody-incensey base, the florals in Dia become more floaty and aqueous.From Ubar there are still the remains of an ancient city that existed in the Arabian Peninsula, more specifically in Oman, also known as the city of a thousand pillars. How does one smell water? I’m not sure if it’s something that I actually smell, or if the bouquet takes on a cool quality that merely reminds me of water. Dia, however, is less heavy than Gold, with a soapier smell in the beginning stages of the scent, and after a half hour of wearing it, I detect what I can only describe as an Ellena-like water note begin to develop. Dia echoes Gold’s sophistication and sense of luxury-and like Gold, it smells old-world perfumey, such that it is likely to draw the “old-lady perfume” criticism that so many of us perfumistas have now grown immune to. What is a surprise-and further testament, I believe, to Jean-Claude Ellena’s genius-is that Dia manages to smell so very much like Gold while at the same time being an adaptation that is friendlier to wear by day and which does, in fact, have Ellena’s signature (not immediately recognizable but evident as the scent dries down). ![]() (Much like Scheherazade settling in for a long night of story-telling in order to survive, and eventually win the love of, her crazed and embittered husband, the Sultan Schahriar, who would otherwise have her head.) It’s as if the thrust of the perfume is to act as a sumptuous cushion for lily-of-valley to recline upon, so that she can beguile with her tender beauty for a long stretch of time. But somehow lilting lily-of-the-valley glides over, or pops in and out of this deep dusky expanse without ever fully succumbing to it (helped along by a chiffon-like lemon note in the scent’s initial stages). Eventually honeyed-rose and warm jasmine envelope it to a degree, along with a deliciously Old-World, vintagey-smelling base, thick with vanilla, civet and moss (and though it’s not listed, vetiver, I believe). Lilies-of-the-valley are of the lily family*, and though here in the United States we think of them as cheerful harbingers of spring and, thusly, more daylight, I have to say that the cool-and-ethereal quality of the lily-of-the-valley note in Ubar does very much remind me of evening, the way it twinkles throughout the fragrance like a night star. I read somewhere that lily is the Persian personification of night: the words lil or lilleh are designations for evening. This newly relaunched fragrance, named for a long-lost ancient trading city of the Middle East, smells true to its heritage-and the way it juxtaposes the delicacy of lily-of-the-valley against the perfume’s deep and full-bodied fabric is masterful in creating the feeling of twilight settling over the open walls of a warm city. My bottle of Amouage Ubar arrived this morning and I have been in full swoon ever since.
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