Amouage is a niche luxury brand making some amazing scents. The house was was erected by the Sultan of Oman in the early 1980s following his desire to revive the classical art of Omani perfume making. Although the brand’s perfumes often utilise materials common to the Middle East, the house’s perfumes are formulated by leading international perfumers and the company has its creative office in Grasse, France. Marketing strategy aside, one of the brand’s strengths is their ability to produce beautifully crafted perfumes. Amouage use ingredients which many competitors, due to cost, prefer not to work with. Sure, the average bottle will cost you £127, but if you have an inclination towards the exotic and the Middle East it’s a small price to pay for a range that delivers in terms of creative formulas as well as quality. Their eastern inspired blends are rich in rose essences, precious woods and gourmand spices immediately transporting any audience off to far away places. Epic Pour Homme is sophisticated and complex. Its woody character is holy and meditative, yet its sensual rose, animalic musk and castoreum notes are sexual and raw. Beautifully constructed, the brand uses perfumers based in the south of France, from perfume Mecca, Grasse. Randa Hammami is the nose that created this formula. It’s divine as it is devilish. Tom Ford, eat your heart out!
Like most Middle Eastern dishes Epic is an assault on the senses. A wonderful smorgasbord of spices: pepper, saffron, cumin, nutmeg and cardamom all welcome you into this perfume harem. Rose geranium and musk are the seductive female elements of the formula. Its male components are oud, sandalwood, leather, patchouli, cedar and frankincense. Synthetic castoreum and resins provide an ambery background against which the other woods resonate.
After about 20 minutes or so, the smokiness calms down and it becomes more leathery and I begin to notice the pink pepper note. At this stage, there is a less in your face spiciness and a sweet smoother fragrance emerges from the pretty powerful start. This is a very complex cologne, it takes you on a journey or different aromatic experiences throughout it’s life cycle and never strikes me as boring.
Projection wise, this is a heavy hitter. Epic starts out very strong but does quiet down to a tolerable level of intensity. You won’t have to overdo the spraying with this one. It also has some good longevity to it, I get 6-7 solid hours of wear, and I can still detect it at the 9 hour mark in a diminished state. Epic is a performer.