Empathy By The House Of Oud

Empathy is the meeting of two minds, and in this eponymous perfume, there is a meeting of two elements that are just as simpatico with each other: a bright, boozy raspberry-pear accord and a smoky, ashy tobacco. Although it leans slightly feminine, anyone who appreciates Tuscan Leather should take note.

The fruit element is playful and interesting: the raspberry is not the hyper-sugared variant seen in fruitchoulis, but rather a tart, fuzzy variant soaked in the Cognac-like richness of davana and pear juice. Rising up to meet and subsume it is a wave of darker, more serious elements – a Patrician accord of cigarillo ash, dry tobacco, and musk, all of which merge into a grey suede that touches briefly on Tuscan Leather but skitters away again into something creamier and hazier. The bright raspberry endures throughout, and actually kind of symbolizes the appeal of this scent: sparkling but sturdy and tenacious. A fruit scent with steel in its backbone.

Pear blossom, raspberry flowers, Indian davana, fruity tobacco, raspberry infusion, scorched wood, transparent mosses, benzoin, silver fir, Irian oud