Stellar Oud

How it Smells

Stellar Oud opens with a blast of tart lemon cleaner and something vaguely metallic, like licking a battery. The bergamot is MIA. The heart brings in the marine notes, but instead of a salty ocean breeze, imagine a stagnant aquarium – fishy seaweed combined with a cloying, synthetic sweetness from the calone. It's not repulsive, but undeniably strange. The drydown attempts to add depth with a cedar note that smells more like pencil shavings mixed with a potent musk. Where it departs from the original is in its lack of depth and that unnerving shrill quality that never quite fades.

Bottom Line

If Stellar Oud were a movie character, it would be the eccentric, slightly unhinged marine biologist who smells perpetually of fish and cleaning products.

Performance Reality Check

I sprayed this on at 7 AM, and I could still detect it clinging to my skin at 4 PM, a solid 9 hours. Projection is monstrous for the first two hours; easily fills a room and then settles to about an arm's length. I wore this while running errands and got zero compliments; a few wrinkled noses, though.