Sultan Pasha Perfumes Thebes is not a fragrance for the uninitiated. It is 2am here and I was feeling restless and the scent makes me even more uneasy emotionally. I do believe it is an intentional work aimed at provoking certain melancholy. An ode to the ancient Egyptian city of the dead—a place where shadows hold more substance than light, where every grain of sand is literally created by  flow of time and the long-term corrosiveness of the desert.

Thebes is about life, decay, resurrection; all somehow bottled into one of the most challenging visceral and animalic experiences for me this month. The opening is almost deliberately austere, confronting, intimidating to say the least. Dry, earthy vetiver mixed with neon bright aldehydes from the vintage Chanel no5 extrait. Supported by iris and spicy heady florals, decaying, animalic. This isn’t a fragrance that wants to smell beautiful in the conventional sense.Oh no-no-no. It is animalic, fatty, very ritualistic which feels so gloomy and intriguing at the same time. Sultan Pasha Perfumes Thebes will wear you if you’re not mindful of the sprays during application. I would not be able to pull it off myself on myself, but I’d admire it on a confident man any day. 

Once it dries down I catch a slight whisper of fruitiness that made me think of dried persimmons of all things. It provides the slight relief to my nose creating that strange luminescence that is really hard for me to put into writing. It’s overwhelming at first—like stepping into a vast, echoing chamber—but absolutely mindblowing if you manage to eventually surrender to its power. 

And once you just lean back and let it evolve further, vetiver starts being playful. Same as with Irisoir, this isn’t the green, sparkling clean vetiver of contemporary fragrances. Instead, it’s earthy, rooty, and very dried soil-like. I think you really this post thinking WTF is going on. Believe me that is what I’m thinking. I’ve been deprived of such releases for too long. My nose got used to Barbie candy-for-everyone releases. There is zero sweetness here. Nada. Zilch.

Sultan Pasha Perfumes Thebes might shock your nose as much as it did mine. If you love fragrance drama, please try it. Earthy vetiver lovers, you have a goldmine here. Crowd-pleasing  ambroxan panty-dropper seekers please just exit at this point. This perfume is solely reserved for those who understand that beauty isn’t always comfortable.