Santal Royal

Guerlain launched Santal Royal in the fall of 2014, in limited distribution. Now Smell This reported it in November at Harrods, in London, and in Dubai, in 125 ml; the Moodie Davitt Report specifies that Dubai Duty Free received it in November, two months before the rest of the region.

Thierry Wasser says he sometimes devotes a fragrance to the material that struck him most on his travels, and this time it was sandalwood. In 2023, he told Arab News he conceived it after a conversation with an elderly Emirati, for whom Europeans did not know how to make a grand perfume.

The fragrance first targeted the Gulf. Kafkaesque reported it in the United States at the end of 2014, at Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks. Sold under the name Les Absolus d’Orient Santal Royal, it later joined the Absolus Allegoria collection, where Guerlain presents it today.

A sandalwood in the half-light

Guerlain today describes a rare and precious wood rising in the half-light, in a play of contrasts between the dark notes of leather and the oud accord and the elegance of jasmine and rose. Absolus Allegoria, according to the house, explores nature at nightfall.

Wasser credits sandalwood with woody, luminous facets, a creamy yet deep freshness, and a suppleness that lets it embrace spicy or floral notes. The house says it sources mainly from Australia, from a plantation the perfumer has visited several times.