United Arab Emirates is the country of wealth and luxury in every sense, so no wonder why this market is favorite and so desirable for many luxury brands. One of them is certainly Guerlain who has started to design fragrances for the Arab market. For this 2016, Guerlain has prepared its fifth Middle Eastern fragrance, called Ambre Éternel. It’s a follow-up of Santal Royal from 2014, and has a lot of in common with it, not only in the design of the bottle, but in a few fragrant tones, such as strong woody notes, the smell of leather, neroli, peach, cinnamon and amber. Other perfume notes include coriander, cinnamon, peach, neroli, ylang-ylang, woody notes…
The name, Ambre Éternel, suggests that this perfume particularly highlights the amber facet. According to Thierry Wasser, Ambre Éternel features ambergris. The bottle for these scents is a dark opaque version of the Aqua Allegoria and Eau de Rituel bottles, with a woollen scarf around the neck. For Ambre Éternel, the bottle is coloured chocolate brown, and the scarf burgundy.
With the advent of Ambre Éternel, marketed as a sequel to Santal Royal, Guerlain invents a new series called Les Absolus d’Orient, with more scents to come. These scents, like Les Déserts d’Orient, are intended for the Middle Eastern market, but at less than half the milliliter price. This market is currently a primary focus of LVMH, whose marketing teams know that people in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf perceive European luxury goods as status symbols.
To recap, Guerlain in 2012 and launched three perfumes named “Les Déserts d’Orient” which, unlike the Santal Royal version, have a little more sweet and musky tone, not so favorite to Arabs. Living in an extremely hot climate, they want strong woody and spicy scents. And Ambre Éternel will give them exactly that.