Shei-du-na. Enunciate each syllable and all the right associations come to mind: she, sheikh, dunes. In his 1992 novel The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje mentions that sand dunes in the Sahara resemble the dips and hollows of a woman’s back. Sheiduna perfectly captures that sense of duality between two things that look the same and yet are not the same – the shadowed softness of a woman’s hip and the dusty angularity of a wind-sharpened dune.

The opening is a plume of smoke and tangerine peel set inside a golden, radiant cloud of resins that swirls around the wearer like a sand storm. Out of this expansive blur of sparkling particles emerges a spicy clove note that gives the fragrance a subtle vintage Opium hue. A rich rose weaves in and out of this fuzzy haze of amber and spices, like the orange-red glow of lighthouse in thick fog. It’s this seamless shifting between dry, spicy radiance and soft, sweet florals and vanilla that makes Sheiduna so interesting – and so difficult to define. We’d sum it up by saying it’s like breathing in the arid air of the desert while nuzzling the neck of an exotically perfumed woman.

Lemon, tangerine, blackcurrant, aldehydes, Bulgarian rose essence, geranium, clove, vetiver, patchouli, woody amber, incense, benzoin, myrrh, tonka bean, vanilla pods, musks