The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Oswald Paré built Sérénade in 2021, and the name sets the brief: a serenade isn't shouted across a courtyard, it's offered up close, maybe even murmured. Paré came to perfumery not through formal training or a family atelier, and Sérénade arrives as one of his more opulent gestures, a composition that courts rather than confesses, built around materials that carry their own heat: two ouds from different origins, a pair of absolutes, and honey threaded through the spine. Honey is the anchor here, the note around which everything else orbits. Two ouds from different origins create the spine, their divergent characters giving the composition its depth and complexity.
What's unusual here is the dual oud. Indian oud and Thai oud appear together rather than as alternatives, which means two distinct oud voices play off each other. Pair that with Ruh Kewda (pandanus blossom), a material most Western houses ignore, and the fragrance refuses to sit comfortably in either the floral or the Oriental camp. It leans into its own spice, its own animalic edge, its own golden cloy. The Ruh Kewda does something unexpected, bridging the floral heart and the resinous base with a creamy-cool sweetness that no other note quite provides.
The evolution
The first ten minutes are almost entirely about honey and bergamot, the citrus bright enough to cut through the sweetness but not enough to claim the spotlight. Then ylang-ylang absolute and jasmine sambac absolute flood in, the florals carrying a waxy, almost medicinal richness that doesn't behave like a polite white-floral accord. Around the forty-minute mark, the dual oud starts to surface, bringing smoke, leather, and a faintly barnyard warmth that never overwhelms but refuses to leave. The drydown is where things get interesting: the honey recedes but never disappears, the amber and musk pull everything down to skin level, and the oud settles into something close to worn wood. As the hours pass, the fragrance goes through several transformations, each one revealing a different facet of the composition.
Cultural impact
Sérénade draws comparisons to Amouage Jubilation XXV, Papillon Artisan Perfumes Bengale Rouge, and Hiram Green Slowdive, but its dual-oud structure and pandanus note keep it from being mistaken for any of them. The combination sets it apart even in an increasingly crowded indie landscape. Where many oud-forward compositions lean into either traditional Middle Eastern conventions or minimalist Western interpretation, Sérénade plants itself somewhere between those poles.
