Ombre Nomade

The Story

Ombre Nomade was built as a direct homage to Middle Eastern perfumery, drawing on Jacques Cavallier Belletrud's own time in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Oman. The oud assam is lifted by a flash of raspberry, and the image the house uses for it is smoke shaped by wind across desert sand.

Main AccordsTap an accord to explore it

AmberWarm SpicyOudRoseSmokyWoody

Accord

Amber

Golden resin glowing warm

A soft, resinous glow built from labdanum, benzoin, and vanilla, sweet but dusky, like sun-warmed tree sap with a hint of incense smoke. It radiates a cozy, golden heat that wraps close to the skin and lingers.

Accord

Warm Spicy

Glowing embers of the spice drawer

The rounded heat of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg, dry and slightly resinous, like a baking pantry rather than a sharp kitchen. It creates a flushed, enveloping warmth that feels intimate and cool-weather, hugging the skin from within.

Accord

Oud

Dark resinous wood with depth

A dense, resinous wood that smells warm and slightly medicinal, with a leathery, animal-tinged smokiness and a sweet, almost barnyard funk underneath. It feels ancient and brooding, wrapping the skin in something thick and quietly powerful.

Accord

Rose

Velvet petals, honey and thorn

The layered scent of true petals, dewy and fruity up top, with a deeper jammy, honeyed heart and a faint peppery, green bite. It feels timeless and emotional, by turns delicate and commanding depending on how it unfolds.

Accord

Smoky

Charred wood and rising embers

The dry, charred scent of burning wood, smoldering incense, and lingering ash, sometimes tarry, sometimes wispy and gray. It feels brooding and atmospheric, conjuring a dying fire and a cool current of air carrying its last breath.

Accord

Woody

Dry grain of cut timber

The smell of cedar shavings, sandalwood, and dry vetiver roots, a sanded, resinous warmth with a faint pencil-box rasp. It feels grounded and composed, the quiet backbone that makes a scent read as serious and lasting.

Notes PyramidTap a note to explore it

Top Notes

Raspberry

Heart Notes

RoseSaffronBirchGeranium

Base Notes

AgarwoodIncenseAmberwoodBenzoin

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Top note

Raspberry

A berry conjured, since none can be extracted

What it is

There is no raspberry essential oil or absolute, so the note is always a construction. The lab route rests on raspberry ketone, also sold as frambinone, with beta-ionone bridging berry and violet and furaneol supplying cooked-fruit sweetness. A naturals-only route reaches for boronia absolute, which smells of raspberry jam and tea, alongside davana, rose and violet leaf.

How it smells

Ripe and jammy, sweet rather than sharp, with a powdery floral shadow that surfaces as it settles. The lab build is brighter and a little candied, vivid on first spray and steady in shape. A botanical reconstruction reads warmer and wilder, threaded with green and rosy nuances, softer at the edges and shifting as it dries.

In perfumery

Raspberry runs through fruity-florals and gourmands, pairing with rose, violet, patchouli, vanilla and white musks. Raspberry ketone is unusual among fruit materials for its tenacity, holding into the dry-down where most fruit notes have already gone. Boronia is scarce and expensive, so botanical versions appear mostly in small, hand-poured work.

Good to know

Raspberry leaf absolute does exist, but it smells green and leafy rather than of fruit and is not a substitute. Neither route puts raspberry in the bottle. The aroma-chemical version is loud, stable and repeatable, while the botanical version is quieter, drifts with the harvest and cannot be matched exactly between batches.

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Heart note

Rose

The queen of flowers, fresh and endlessly deep

What it is

Perfumery rose comes mainly from two species: Rosa damascena, grown in Bulgaria's Valley of Roses and in Turkey, and Rosa centifolia from Grasse. Whole blossoms are picked by hand from before sunrise into the morning, then either water-distilled and cohobated into rose otto or solvent-extracted into a deeper, redder absolute via a waxy concrete.

How it smells

Rich, fresh and unmistakably floral, with honeyed sweetness and a green, dewy lift. Beneath sit spicy, fruity and faintly tea-like facets, and in the absolute a darker, jammy depth. Rose otto opens crisp and bright; the absolute reads warmer, smokier and more sensual.

In perfumery

A heart note of extraordinary range, rose adds body, freshness and natural floral richness, blending with almost anything. It anchors the chypre and floral families and pairs with oud, patchouli and violet. It is the showpiece of countless classic floral and chypre compositions.

Good to know

It takes roughly three to four thousand kilograms of hand-picked blossoms to distill a single kilogram of rose otto, which helps explain why the oil can rival precious metals in price. Picking begins before sunrise and runs into the morning, while the flower still holds its oil.

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Heart note

Saffron

Crimson threads breathing leather, honey and dry hay

What it is

Saffron is the dried stigma of Crocus sativus, a purple autumn-flowering crocus in the iris family. Each bloom yields just three slender crimson threads, plucked by hand. The dried threads are steeped into a tincture or solvent-extracted into an absolute to capture their aromatic oil for perfumery.

How it smells

Warm and dry at first, with hay, honey and toasted bread, then a metallic, leathery edge driven by the molecule safranal. Beneath runs a bittersweet, faintly medicinal earthiness and a soft rubbery warmth. It opens spicy and golden, drying into suede, tobacco and dusty amber.

In perfumery

Saffron works in the heart, bridging spice and leather and lending a glowing, reddish warmth. It pairs classically with rose, oud, amber and tobacco. Whole leathery accords can be built around it, and it is often wed to rose for a rich, spiced-floral effect.

Good to know

Saffron is the costliest spice on earth, and nothing else in the trade comes near it by weight. A single kilogram demands roughly 150,000 hand-picked flowers and many days of stooped labor. Most perfumery saffron is reconstructed from synthetic safranal or saffron bases, since the natural extract is too rare and expensive to use widely.

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Heart note

Birch

Smoke, leather and cool green bark

What it is

Material from Betula trees of cool northern forests. Two forms matter: birch tar, a dark smoky oil made by dry-distilling the bark over heat, and sweeter birch leaf or bud extracts. The tar carries phenols and creosote-like compounds, the source of its leathery character.

How it smells

Birch tar is intensely smoky and leathery, recalling campfire embers, tar, charred wood and old saddle leather, with a medicinal phenolic bite. Birch leaf and sap read greener and cooler, like wet bark, mint-tinged foliage and freshly snapped twigs in damp woodland.

In perfumery

Birch tar is a base note building smoky-leather and chypre accords, lending ruggedness and depth. Greener birch facets work in fresh and woody tops. It is the smoldering backbone of leather scents and of the classic dry, tarry leather genre of the early twentieth century.

Good to know

IFRA restricts birch tar over its carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, so perfumers work with purified, rectified grades rather than the crude pyrolysate. Birch tar once impregnated Russian leather, or yuft, which gave the whole Russian-leather genre its smoky, tar-edged signature.

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Heart note

Geranium

A rose with green stems and crushed mint

What it is

Perfumery geranium comes from Pelargonium graveolens and related rose-scented pelargoniums, not the true Geranium genus. Grown in Egypt, China and on Reunion (the prized Bourbon type), the leaves and stems are steam-distilled to yield a green, rosy essential oil.

How it smells

Fresh, green and rosy with a crisp, leafy bite and a cool minty lift. Facets of lemon, rose and a powdery sweetness weave through a herbaceous, slightly peppery body. Bourbon geranium leans richer and rosier, drying down soft, green and faintly fruity.

In perfumery

A heart-note workhorse bridging florals and fougeres, adding rosy-green freshness, lift and a herbal facet read as masculine. It pairs with rose, mint, clove, bergamot and vetiver. It anchors crisp masculine florals and the rosy-green heart of many classic and soliflore geranium compositions.

Good to know

Geranium oil is a common, affordable stand-in for parts of costly rose, sharing the molecule citronellol and rounding out rose accords at a fraction of the price. Reunion's Bourbon geranium, once the global benchmark, has grown scarce as cultivation shifted to Egypt and China.

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Base note

Agarwood

The wounded heartwood where oud begins

What it is

Agarwood is the dark, resin-saturated heartwood an Aquilaria tree lays down after a wound sets off its defences, with fungi and other stresses deepening the response. Healthy wood is pale and odourless; the defensive resin transforms it into a dense, fragrant material. Distilled or burned, that resin becomes oud. The two words name one thing at different stages.

How it smells

As raw chips on a charcoal burner, agarwood gives a warm, sweet, woody smoke laced with resin, spice and a faint animal-balsamic depth. Higher grades sink toward honeyed incense and cooling camphor; lower or younger wood smells greener, sharper and more fermented, closer to damp earth.

In perfumery

Most agarwood is consumed as wood rather than perfume, burned in the bakhoor and incense traditions of the Gulf, India, Japan and China. The finest chips fetch staggering prices, and CITES Appendix II covers every Aquilaria species, planted as well as wild, so much of today's supply comes from inoculated plantation trees moving under permit.

Good to know

Grade tracks resin density: the heaviest, darkest pieces sink in water and are the most prized, the reason East Asian names for it mean sinking incense. The rarest grade of all, kyara or kinam, is sweeter and cooler than ordinary agarwood and treated as almost sacred. Aquilaria is CITES Appendix II, so the trade is regulated rather than closed: Annotation 14 exempts finished products packaged and ready for retail trade, but names wood chips, beads and carvings out of that exemption.

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Base note

Incense

Sacred smoke curling from resin and embers

What it is

In perfumery, incense usually means olibanum, the oleo-gum-resin of Boswellia trees from Oman, Somalia and Ethiopia. The bark is slashed, weeps a milky exudate that hardens into amber tears, and these are steam-distilled to an essential oil or solvent-extracted to an absolute; blends often add labdanum and styrax.

How it smells

Cool, dry and resinous, with a sharp citrus-pine lift over smoky, peppery warmth. There is a clean church-air quality: balsamic, slightly soapy, faintly green. It opens bright and turpentine-fresh, then settles into a meditative, ashen-sweet woodiness that lingers close to the skin.

In perfumery

A heart-to-base material prized for its contemplative, smoky-resinous character. It cools florals, sharpens woods and lends ritual gravity to oriental and chypre accords. It defines the great church-incense scents and the cold, mineral incense of many a meditative niche composition.

Good to know

Frankincense was among antiquity's costliest imports, carried along ancient Arabian caravan routes to temples across the Mediterranean and beyond. Wild Boswellia stands are now threatened by over-tapping, grazing and climate stress, prompting growing interest in sustainable harvesting and tapping quotas.

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Base note

Amberwood

Synthetic amber that glows dry and woody

What it is

Amberwood is not a plant but a perfumer's term for a family of synthetic woody-amber aroma chemicals, and the name of specific commercial materials such as Amberwood F (Boisambrene Forte). These molecules emerged as stable, affordable substitutes for natural ambergris and scarce precious woods.

How it smells

Dry, warm and radiant: a woody-amber glow with musky, slightly mineralic and faintly salty facets recalling ambergris. It reads smooth and abstract rather than sweet, with a velvety transparency. It barely shifts over time, instead spreading a soft, persistent woody halo across the skin.

In perfumery

A base note and fixative giving lasting power, diffusion and a clean amber-wood backbone. It blends seamlessly with Iso E Super, ambroxan, musks and rose. This woody-amber accord drives countless contemporary scents, from designer ambers to the dry, transparent woods of modern niche releases.

Good to know

Amberwood materials have no link to fossilized tree amber, which is essentially odorless. The name borrows amber's warm image while the molecules deliver a dependable, sustainable stand-in for endangered ambergris and rare woods, which is why so many modern perfumes share a similar amber-wood signature.

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Base note

Benzoin

Warm vanilla balsam wept from a tapped tree

What it is

Benzoin is a balsamic resin from Styrax trees of Southeast Asia. Siam benzoin comes from Styrax tonkinensis (Laos, Vietnam), Sumatra benzoin from Styrax benzoin (Indonesia). Incisions in the bark make the tree exude a gum that hardens over months into reddish tears, processed into resinoid and absolute.

How it smells

Sweet, warm and balsamic with a pronounced vanilla character and powdery, ambery, faintly cinnamic facets. Siam is rounder and more vanillic; Sumatra is smokier with a cinnamon-styrax edge. It opens soft and creamy, then dries into a cozy, resinous, almost caramelized sweetness.

In perfumery

A warm base note and gentle fixative lending sweetness, body and a vanillic glow to amber accords. It blends with labdanum, vanilla, tonka and incense, smoothing orientals and gourmands. Benzoin is a defining warmth in golden-age oriental classics and countless amber compositions.

Good to know

Benzoin gave its name to benzoic acid and, through it, to the chemical term benzene. The word itself traces to the Arabic luban jawi, "frankincense of Java." The resin never flows on its own; every tear is the tree healing an incision deliberately cut into its bark.

Fragrance Character

The raspberry dissolves quickly, serving only to lift the saffron and geranium into focus before the birch and oud assert themselves with real weight. In the heart, rose provides softness without sweetness, threaded through with the metallic warmth of saffron. On the drydown, benzoin and amberwood mellow the smoke into a close, resinous skin-signature that lingers with quiet intensity.

Performance

Longevity

how long it stays on skin

This gauge reads the expected wear time, how many hours the fragrance keeps speaking on skin before it fades. A marker near the low end means a few fleeting hours, while a marker pushed to the far end promises a scent still present from morning into night.

Performance

Sillage

the size of its scent trail

This reads how far the fragrance reaches beyond you and the trail it leaves behind. Low sits soft against the skin, an intimate whisper noticed only up close; high climbs through moderate and strong toward enormous, filling a room and lingering in the air after you have left it.

Occasion

Experimental

For the bold and curious

Unconventional, boundary-pushing scents for someone who wants to provoke a reaction and stand apart. Suited to artistic, challenging compositions: inky tar, rubber, fermented fruit, metallic or animalic facets that defy easy liking. On this wheel a glowing coin means it rewards the adventurous nose, a dim one means it plays things safe.

Occasion

Office

Polished but never overpowering

Close-quarters professional settings where a scent should be noticed only by those near you. Suited to restrained, clean compositions with modest projection: tidy citrus, soft musk, pale woods that read competent and considerate. On this wheel a glowing coin means it works in shared workspaces, a dim one means it carries too far.

Occasion

Evening

After dark, turned up

Dinners, drinks, and nights out when a fragrance can deepen and project with confidence. Suited to richer, warmer compositions: ambers, resins, smoky woods, or plush florals that bloom under low light. On this wheel a glowing coin means the scent comes alive after sundown, a dim one means it stays better suited to daytime.

Occasion

Romantic

Close enough to be felt

Intimate moments and date nights meant to draw someone nearer. Suited to warm, sensual compositions that hum against skin: creamy florals, vanilla, soft musk, a touch of spice or amber that invites closeness. On this wheel a glowing coin means it sets an alluring mood, a dim one means it leans more practical than seductive.

Occasion

Formal

Refined for the occasion that matters

Weddings, ceremonies, galas, and dressed-up affairs that call for composure and elegance. Suited to polished, structured scents with quiet authority: smooth woods, refined florals, soft leather, nothing loud or playful. On this wheel a glowing coin means it carries the right gravitas, a dim one means it feels too casual for the room.

Occasion

Casual

Easy comfort for unhurried days

Everyday wear with no agenda: errands, coffee, friends, a slow weekend. Suited to soft, approachable scents that feel clean and natural, like fresh citrus, light woods, or a gentle skin warmth. On this wheel a glowing coin means the fragrance fits these laid-back moments, a dim one means it asks for more.

Performance

Day to Night

where its mood naturally falls

This slider reads the hour the fragrance was made for. A marker to the left leans luminous and bright, easy in daylight and open air; slide it right and the character turns deeper and warmer, the kind of presence that belongs to evening and candlelit rooms.

Season

Winter

Warmth that carries through cold air

Cold air mutes and slows a fragrance, so winter rewards the dense and the warm: resins, smoke, vanilla, leather, and ambered spice that radiate heat against the chill. The bar shows how strongly this particular scent holds up and glows in cold weather.

Season

Spring

Fresh blooms in mild, rising warmth

Mild, humid air lifts lighter compositions beautifully, so spring favors dewy florals, green stems, soft powder, and transparent citrus that feel alive rather than heavy. The bar shows how well this particular scent matches that fresh, gently warming season.

Season

Summer

Bright and airy in real heat

Heat amplifies and projects scent hard, so summer calls for cool, crisp, breathable things: sharp citrus, salty marine air, aromatic herbs, and watery freshness that refresh instead of cloy. The bar shows how comfortably this particular scent wears in real warmth.

Season

Fall

Spiced warmth for cooling days

As temperatures drop, richer materials read clearly without smothering, so autumn suits dry woods, warm spice, tobacco, amber, and golden fruit that feel cozy and contemplative. The bar shows how naturally this particular scent settles into crisp, cooling days.

Best Worn

Best suited to the cold months, worn after dark at a formal occasion or an intimate dinner where the smoke and amber can unfold slowly against cool air.