Santal Royal by GUERLAIN

This is the promise offered and the aura evoked by this fragrance devoted to sandalwood. By highlighting this element, Guerlain is paying clear homage to a natural raw ingredient whose divine volutes have cradled and bathed oriental civilisations since the dawn of time. While historically sandalwood has been the exclusive privilege of India and South-East Asia, it now holds a different fascination for Middle Eastern countries.

This fragrance is therefore intimately dedicated to them. Composed, above all, with Guerlain’s distinctive touch: this new creation perpetuates the desire to nurture and offer something that is becoming extremely rare and to spread far and wide Guerlain’s reputation as a great perfumer.

Sandalwood was introduced to the kingdoms of Arabia during the period when the Arabs, expert sailors, were the masters of the oceans, connoisseurs and purveyors of spices and precious woods, like the great traveller Ibn Battuta who, over a period of thirty years, visited most of the known Islamic world as well as many non-Muslim lands. His journeys included trips to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Africa and Eastern Europe in the West, and to the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China.

However, the use of sandalwood in perfumes was rarer at first. The Arabs brought it to Europe in the Middle-Ages: the famous Cordovan leather was infused with it. Since then, worked in light touches in certain chypre and oriental scents or a number of fragrances for men, it would not be boldly evoked until 1989 and the arrival of a new era with Samsara by Guerlain, a feminine scent masterfully composed around sandalwood and jasmine.

Santal Royal is a fragrance with oriental, woody and spicy notes. However, one scent – no matter how sublime and distinctive – does not make a fragrance; it must be adorned so that sandalwood’s rare and precious heart, which only offers its fragrance after 15 years, unfolds in all its fullness. Neroli, a sunshine flower that radiates with joyful cheer, and cinnamon, exuding warm and vibrant notes that are a blend of wood and spices, appear at the top. They are subsequently accompanied by an essence of roses, the queen of flowers whose precious character has the power to enchant and beautifully enhance sandalwood, and a subtle fruity accord. Other amber, leather and oud accords highlight and accentuate the essence’s elegant vibration. Yet, beyond sandalwood’s sacred dimension, Thierry Wasser has instilled it with a more sensual facet, adding an innovative hint of musk with the Guerlain signature, allowing divine vapours and a modern unisex fragrance to live side by side.

The cylindrical black lacquer bottle, tied at the neck with a black and gold ribbon trim, intensifies the mystery of what it holds inside, just like its cap echoes the rounded lines at the top of certain oriental monuments. Its label with elegant arabesque designs is taken from Guerlain’s heritage.