Layers of Jade: Papuska

It feels like we’ve been waiting forever to actually do this. 

Two years ago, Green Papua – the aged wild oud responsible for much of the perfume’s almost preternatural verdancy – was steeped in Tonkin musk and left alone. And while Layers of Jade already had that unmistakable Papuan green coursing through it, this limited batch was slowly morphing into something else: musk sinking into the oud, the oud absorbing the musk, month after month, until what began as an infusion became difficult to pull apart into its constituent parts.

Now, we finally got to pour it back into the perfume it came from.

When you smell it for the first time, you’re not sure – was your nose set up for a verdant ambush or is this the most soulful green zen you’ve ever smelled? Or both?

And where on Earth does this smell come from? It’s like you’ve stepped into a sonorous forest alive with petrichor… but not on this planet.

And the longer you smell it, the stranger that forest becomes.

That unmistakable Papuan green is still there – cool, resinous, rain-soaked and almost fluorescent with life – but something *feral* now moves through the undergrowth. Two years steeped in musk has altered the oud’s deepest grain, darkening the wet foliage with the smell of earth and skin, giving its green incense an animalic hum that seems to rise from somewhere beneath the forest floor.

If you’ve never smelled the verve of green vetiver roots, then there’s a hole in your olfactory palette. An experience so lush and herbaceous, green Indian khus smells almost more full of life than lying nose-down in a forest trail listening to the hum of the Earth.

Imagine that level of green; then picture those wild roots drenched in the aboriginal foliage of wild Papuan agarwood, its piercing verdancy now exalted with the truffle-earthen profile of extinct musk. The two meet somewhere between root, resin, rain and animal – a green so alive it seems to have body heat.

When we gave one of the attendees at the Hong Kong OudFest a spritz of Layers of Jade and then later a swipe of Green Papua to explain that this is the actual oud in the perfume, a light went on… “Ahhhh, yes, I can smell the perfume is full of this!”

Because Layers of Jade is a highly unusual perfume, the desire to keep sniffing it is dialed up a notch. What IS this? But it’s not just because of the scent’s uniqueness, but also because the vegetative oud-injected herbal pull is naturally inviting – and now there’s a warm musky undertow tugging beneath all that green.

Another attendee at the HK OudFest lost track of time with his nose stuck to the scent strip as if there was no one else around him. We literally had to snap him out of it!

Take the pure earthen artisanal oud of the greenest order that rides atop the vibrant vetiver and strap on the ethereal sweet wings of rose otto and smell the scent take off and quickly fill the room.

The green resinous tenor of Green Papua – now intensified by its nearly two-year musk infusion – and vintage (±20-years-old) Malaysian oud is amped up further by tobacco leaf and then sweetened by plum and castoreum, all fizzing with the vitalizing spicy vigor of patchouli.

Composition: Tonkin-Infused Green Papua Oud (Wild) • Vintage Malaysian Oud (Wild) • Green Vetiver • Japanese Hinoki • Pink Pepper • Juniper Berry • Rose Otto • Plum • Orris Butter • Patchouli • Tobacco

As you can see, this perfume is base-heavy. So, you’re in for a surprise when you’re met with wafts of piercing green oud khus as if they’ve been transformed into lush top notes.

Except now those wafts have something underneath them – the cool green incision of Papuan oud followed by a warmer, muskier shadow, as if the wet jungle floor itself had developed a pulse.

By this point in its long steep, the musk has sunk deep into the oud’s verdant grain. The piercing green resin now smells streaked with crushed leaves and the mineral funk of soil after rain; the Papuan jungle floor turned over with a spade, roots torn open, wet bark split to expose the resin underneath. And through it all rises that unmistakable green oud incense, only now with something feral breathing through the smoke.

The result is green zen in a bottle – musked-up.

Reviews of Previous Edition…