The story behind Abu Dhabi-inspired perfume from Memo Paris: 'It's warm, fresh, sweet'

The fragrance, which was launched at Abu Dhabi Art, has notes of saffron, cardamom, oud, dates and amber

Memo Paris has created a fragrance called Abu Dhabi inspired by the UAE capital. Photo: Memo Paris

Memo Paris specialises in creating fragrances that evoke memories of certain places.

This includes, for example, the musky freshness of Marfa, Texas; the eccentric sweetness of Cappadocia, Turkey; the citrus-infused air of Sicily, Italy; and the floral alleys of Chefchaouen, Morocco – all these perfumes tell the stories of cities through scent.

The brand's latest launch at Abu Dhabi Art aims to capture the essence and heritage of the UAE capital. “I chose the place Abu Dhabi. I love the name ... it's already joyful. It's like a poem,” Clara Molloy, founder and creative director of Memo Paris, tells The National.

She first visited the emirate a decade ago and continued to do so after falling in love with Abu Dhabi. She also came across sadu, the traditional Emirati style of weaving, and felt inspired.

Upon first smelling the fragrance Abu Dhabi – a simmering warm, spicy saffron stands out, engulfed with notes of cardamom and oud essence. As it settles on the skin, a whiff of sweet dates and fresh amber takes over.

“You know when the sun is really red? It's not night, it's not day, it's between two things – still fresh, you can feel a breeze. I wanted this perfume to be fresh but powerful and sweet. To have this balance, like a key moment when things turn,” Molloy adds.

When she travelled to the UAE capital, Molloy felt it was a place of “grace”. She recounts the times she felt blessed and centred in places all around the world, expressing that “some places reveal you, change you and make you evolve”, and for her, Abu Dhabi was one of them.

In the process of capturing the scents of the cities, Molloy wrote down her feelings about the places she visited and what she learnt from the people there in a poem. This ends up on a postcard attached to the perfume. She also shared those feelings, her experience and some photos with a perfumer in France, who creates the “magic in a bottle”. In the case of the Abu Dhabi fragrance, Mylene Arlan was the nose behind it.

“I tell them one emotion, so it was really this key moment of the sunset with the red sun. It's warm, it's fresh, it has sweetness. The night is covering you, which is a very special feeling because sometimes when you feel covered, you feel trapped, but this is something protecting you, so you have intimacy and infinity above,” explains Molloy.

To imitate the idea of weaving the sadu in the fragrance, Memo Paris also created a box containing the perfume's top notes that offers the chance to layer the different scents based on preference.

“In this VIP box, you have six small perfumes that are inspired by the top ingredients that you can find in the perfume. You have saffron, amber, vetiver, dates, cardamom and plum. With this, you can have a hyper-personalised perfume, so you can have something unique and more like you,” says Rim Hedda, marketing executive at Memo Paris.

In addition to all of that, there is also a scrapbook of visuals to accompany those scents. An imaginary map is included and is a “way of mixing emotions and places”, says Molloy, adding: “Our map is part of our DNA. We dream about places, we dream about fragrances and the story we tell is always a part of a dream.”

The map includes different aspects of what makes the city that the perfume is based on and the notes included in the fragrance.

“We want it to be imaginary as well, it's not just holistic. It's not only taking the ingredients from the place, the place gives us the architecture, the story, a feeling and emotion, a very precise emotion somewhere but then we want to interpret it and we want to be free about it,” Molloy says.

Along with the map, the Abu Dhabi fragrance is accompanied by a painting that visualises the scent. French painter Julien Colombier was tasked with creating the colours and visuals of the fragrance. He created a contrast, painting the background black and using colours such as blue against yellow, red and green and soft pinks.

“I have never been, so it was this mental projection of what I feel about Abu Dhabi,” says Colombier. “It makes me glad because I think my drawing matches Abu Dhabi.”

Memo Paris Abu Dhabi perfume costs Dh1,160 ($316) and is available at Bloomingdale's, Harvey Nichols and online at Ounass