from gallivant founder nick steward
The Abu Dhabi story
“With this fragrance I capture some of the romance, adventure and the beautiful simplicity I first read about in Wilfred Thesinger’s Arabian Sands while I studied Arabic at university. That was my first experience of the Emirates and Abu Dhabi. Incandescent light, the sand horizon, the shifting splendour of the dunes, the warm wind from the Empty Quarter, the Rub al Khali desert.”
“I wanted to evoke an expedition across the dunes and give it a kind of sepia-tinged minimalism. So there’s most definitely a dose of nostalgia in this composition, a neo-vintage feeling. I was seeking an emotional echo of those era-defining perfumes from the late 80s and 1990s such as Bel Ami and Fahrenheit, composed by the legendary Jean-Louis Sieuzac.”
The perfume notes:
Top: the scent opens with cypress, pink pepper, peppermint, rosemary, cardamom and cistus
Mid: the heart of this perfume is composed around clary sage, saffron, geranium and iris / orris
Base: the drydown, with its beautifully memorable sillage, evocative of the desert breeze, is constructed with cedarwood, patchouli, leather notes and musks
Meet the maker
For the creation of the Abu Dhabi fragrance, founder Nick Steward called on Lucas Sieuzac, a frequent traveller to the Emirates.
Says Nick “I love working with Lucas – first of all it’s a very enjoyable philosophical conversation, about perfume and other matters. And at the same time coloured with an easy-going humour. I greatly enjoy Lucas’ lightness of being, his effortless precision and simplicity. And then there is something classic, clear-thinking in his composition, with a neo-vintage vibe, an old school elegance I find in the Emirati culture. Elegant, uncluttered - and to the point.”
Adds Lucas “this perfume symbolizes for me the fine line between modernity and tradition, which feels like a very Emirati characteristic. We’ve blended key ingredients of traditional Middle Eastern perfumery - spices like saffron, pink pepper, as well as balsamic accented cistus and leather - alongside the components of a modern fougère construction – such as rosemary, cypress, clary sage, geranium, and orris, on a bed of cedarwood, patchouli and musks.”
