Animal Farm

Some perfumes are not made to please. They’re a bad marketing move, they could ‘alienate customers’. They’re risky.

Yet, all the reasons the big board meetings would use to shut down such a release are exactly the reasons perfumes like this should have a voice. It’s why you’re here reading this instead of being out awkwardly walking past the lipstick section to reach the shelves stocking the best-selling ‘rugged’ and ‘manly’ perfumes.

Leather, instead of some agenda-pushing pleather. A scent that challenges the fashion of what sweety new scents should be trending this season. Animal Farm is, and smells, counter culture – and some will not like that. 

Even within ‘niche’ fragrances, Animal Farm wipes the floor with them, containing 50% OUD (and no, it’s not a Hindi… in case that’s what you were expecting). Raunchy Vietnamese oud that shouts at you right from the opening as it barges down from the base through the top notes to let your nose know, right from the get go – Bam! 

Black pepper clashing with caraway, cypriol having a coffee tiff as the punchy herbal pitch of violet leaf shoots into smooth orris. And rose. And jasmine. And lotus. A shot of beeswax that instantly melts into the Vietnamese oud to come out smelling…… wait, did the sandalwood get in there as well? This is becoming interesting…

If you thought the yard only belongs to uncle Hindi, you haven’t met cousin Sinensis. If you thought peppermint is meant for bubble gum, you haven’t smelled it grated into oud ground into lavender stirred into cardamom because there’s no trace of it anymore. But there is – only all those facets were transmuted into a green herbal earthy oud fest.

This is the final unreleased leather edition hand-made by the late leather master Habib Dingle. Ask those who have tried to duplicate his work who quit while they were only so far behind – or simply flip the bottle around to see the work of a man who perfected his craft.

That’s why we didn’t just put any ol’ juice inside the bottle it carries; to honor his memory with a chypre-or-is-it? artisanal oud brew I’m sure a man who who smelled the virgin air, slipped on mud trails, smelled the early morning dew, whose teeth chattered under the cold nights while the smell of hay filled the humid days as he hiked on foot from England to the Himalayas would appreciate. 

Limited supply. 

Featured Testimonials…

Welcome to the Farm

So what should I say ? Let’s start with the name, I don’t think there could be a more fitting name for a perfume like this. I’m honest when I say that the first spray of this perfume, right after receiving it from the fedex guy, was quite off putting to me. The farm smell was so authentic that I couldn’t handle it But when I’ve learned one thing, than it’s the fact that the initial spray of a freshly delivered EO perfume is quite different from the full experience after it has settled down and recovered from the far journey around the globe.

So I’ve waited a few hours and applied 3 sprays of Animal Farm around my neck and there we go…

A brutal oud note which I’d never categorize as Vietnamese oud if I wouldn’t have known before, followed with dry florals, that earthy and green hay-mint mixture and leathery tobacco notes from the oud.

I would say it’s a chypre scent not a typical chypre and not what you know from previous chypres like sultan and narcotique but probably the oudiest chypre on the planet

I’ll give it another full wear tomorrow and then it’ll get banned into the vault for 2-3 weeks to let it sit for a while. It starts brutal but it’s too fresh to give you the killer sillage. It stays on the skin for a long time but I’m sure that it’ll get louder once it has recovered from the travel.

All in all a nice new EO perfume, if you like challenging scents and you’re into heavy ouds, this one’s for you. Animal farm is not a rookie friendly scent

—Chris A / Germany

I’m just gonna start off by saying that it is not at all what I expected. I was kinda scared by the description that it wouldn’t pass the wife test but she loved it too!

If someone asked me to describe this in 3 words, it would be: leather, oud and mint. Much less “raunchy” animalic than I had envisioned; the animalics in here are very pleasant. Very unique take on the leather-oud genre, much much different from the EO1 line. It’s very green.

Opening is minty herbs and spicy leather; heart is minty florals and leather with the oud starting to kick in, the dry down is where the Vietnamese oud takes over and the leather and mint finally take a backseat. There’s a hay note that lingers around throughout.

—Syed W / USA