Most oud fragrances smell of smoke and leather. Maison Crivelli built its most talked-about one around passion fruit.
The house is young. Thibaud Crivelli founded it in 2018. He is also not a perfumer, and he says so plainly: "I can't formulate, I'm not a perfumer." What he does is brief trained perfumers, people like Bertrand Duchaufour and Nathalie Feisthauer, using images, colours and music, then lets them build the formula. That guest-perfumer model is normal in niche perfumery. Crivelli just admits it.
Crivelli grew up in France and moved to China in 2006, then spent about ten years across Asia. He talks about soaking up raw materials on plantation visits. That travel is where the odd pairings come from.
The founding idea is contrast. Crivelli wanted the house to "work with the unexpected and contrasts", and each scent starts from a real place, not a mood board. So the range reads like a set of collisions. Hot ginger and coffee against scorched wood in Santal Volcanique. Iced herbs and milky lavender in Absinthe Boreale.
The clearest example is Oud Maracuja, launched in 2023. It stacks passion fruit, saffron and Turkish rose on top, then agarwood, patchouli and leather underneath. Bright tropical fruit over dark resin. On paper it should clash. That clash is the whole point.
Here is the part the pretty bottles skip. The word "Maison" makes it sound like a centuries-old institution. It was founded in 2018. The oud is an accord, built to smell like agarwood without felling a protected tree, which is how nearly all modern oud is made now. You pay for the idea and the materials, not a long lineage. And niche money is real money. Oud Maracuja is an extrait, and a 100ml bottle starts near £190 in the UK.
Our Maracuda is our take on Oud Maracuja, that passion-fruit-and-oud contrast in a UK-made 35% spray. The Stallion tracks Oud Stallion if you want the darker, smokier one. See the full Maison Crivelli collection or read the best Maison Crivelli dupes in the UK.
