Seven scents that smell like warm sand

Picture a desert, an endless horizon of sand dunes and dust. Then imagine what it smells like. You might envisage sage, brittlebush or ambrosia. More likely you’ll think of dry earth and musk-tinged air. For Raquel Bouris, founder of Sydney-based perfume house Who is Elijah, “a desert smells like sun-warmed skin, dry earth and the quiet stillness that lingers after sunset”. She captures the phenomenon in Desert Nights with saffron, jasmine and oud.

Byredo plays with sweet cardamom to mimic the scent of a desert in the morning; Penhaligon’s uses vanilla to conjure the winds of AlUla in Saudi Arabia. Escentric Molecules and Trudon use sandalwood to transport the wearer to an imaginary terrain. Other perfumers – Veronique Gabai and Diptyque among them – look to the desert rose, a hardy perennial that populates barren landscapes with unlikely red flowers. As Bouris says: “Deserts are beautifully contradictory – vast yet minimal, silent yet full of emotion. They make you notice quiet details – the way scent clings to skin, or moves through warm, still air.”