Maison Crivelli-Inspired Perfume Oils: Oud Maracuja and the Rest of the House (2026)

Maison Crivelli is the house I have to explain most often. Nobody walks in asking for it by name. They walk in describing a scent they smelled on someone at an airport — something with oud in it, but fruity, but not sweet, but also somehow tropical — and after twenty minutes of back and forth it turns out they mean Oud Maracuja.

So this one is less a shopping list and more an introduction. Crivelli is a young French house, founded in 2018 by an engineer who builds each fragrance around a single memory. The results are strange in a very deliberate way: there's usually one loud, almost uncomfortable idea in the middle of each one, and the rest of the composition is built to make that idea wearable.

That structure translates unusually well into oil, which is why we ended up making five of them.

Oud Maracuja inspired perfume oil: passionfruit and oud, which shouldn't work

This is the one people come looking for. Passionfruit over oud and sandalwood, with a sharp green edge on top that stops the fruit turning into candy.

It's our most expensive Crivelli-style oil at ₹250 for a 10g sample, and it's expensive because of what's underneath it — the oud-facing materials in this profile genuinely cost multiples of what a standard fruity accord costs. I'd rather tell you that than pretend the price is arbitrary.

What it's good for: evening, cold weather, and situations where you want to be asked what you're wearing. It is not an office scent. I wore it to a client meeting once and spent the first ten minutes of the meeting talking about perfume instead of the actual agenda, which was either a great outcome or a terrible one depending on how you look at it.

Tubereuse Astrale inspired perfume oil: white flowers with something metallic underneath

Tubereuse Astrale takes tuberose — already one of the loudest flowers in perfumery — and puts a cool, almost mineral shimmer over it. The effect is that it smells less like a bouquet and more like a flower photographed under a very bright light.

At ₹130 for 10g it's one of the more accessible entries into the house. I'd point women and men both at this one; despite tuberose's reputation it doesn't read as especially feminine here. The mineral quality does a lot of work.

Wear it in air conditioning. In direct Indian afternoon heat the tuberose expands and loses the cool contrast that makes it interesting.

Hibiscus Mahajad inspired perfume oil: the easy one

If Oud Maracuja is the difficult, expensive statement piece, Hibiscus Mahajad is the one you can wear every day. Rhubarb and hibiscus over a warm ambery base — tart at the top, soft underneath.

₹120 for the 10g sample makes it our cheapest Crivelli-style oil and I think it's the best starting point for the house. It's recognisably Crivelli — there's still an odd tart idea sitting in the middle of it — but it doesn't demand anything from you.

The other two: Oud Cadenza and Safran Secret

We also blend Oud Cadenza, a darker and smokier oud reading, and Safran Secret, which is exactly what it sounds like — saffron front and centre, leathery, with the slightly medicinal quality real saffron has when you use enough of it.

Sample stock on both moves in and out, so I'm not linking them here. If you want either one, message us and we'll tell you honestly where they are. Larger sizes are usually available even when the 10g samples aren't.

Saffron in particular is a material worth understanding before you buy — we've written about what saffron actually does in a fragrance if you want the technical version.

Is a niche house worth it in oil form?

Here's my honest position, and it's not entirely in my own commercial interest.

For big, simple designer scents — a fresh aquatic, a clean masculine — the oil version loses relatively little. The composition isn't doing anything complicated and oil holds it fine.

For a house like Crivelli, you lose more. These fragrances are built with a lot of top-note structure, and top notes are exactly what alcohol projects best. Our Oud Maracuja oil is a genuinely good interpretation, but the original's first ninety seconds does something with the green passionfruit that oil physically cannot replicate.

What you gain is duration and cost. The original retails somewhere north of ₹25,000 in India when you can find it. A 10g sample of our version is ₹250 and will outlast it on skin by hours.

Whether that's a good trade depends entirely on whether you're buying a fragrance to smell good all day or buying it as an object. Both are legitimate reasons. I just think people should know which one they're doing.

How to try the house without overcommitting

Take Hibiscus Mahajad and Oud Maracuja together. That's ₹370 and it gives you both ends of the house — the easy one and the difficult one. If you like both, you like Crivelli and the rest will follow. If you like neither, you've spent less than a cab fare finding out.

If you'd rather explore niche more broadly before committing to one house, the niche-inspired oils guide covers the wider territory, and the niche collection has everything in one place.

Application, because oils are unforgiving

These are concentrated. One dab on each wrist is the entire dose. Oud Maracuja in particular will fill a car if you overdo it, and there's no undo button — you can't wash an oil off the way you can air out a spray.

Apply to moisturised skin, leave it ten minutes before deciding what you think, and don't put it on silk.

A note on names: every oil described here is an original Unravel Perfumery blend. We do not sell Maison Crivelli fragrances and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Maison Crivelli. Names like Oud Maracuja, Tubereuse Astrale, Hibiscus Mahajad, Oud Cadenza and Safran Secret are referenced only to describe the style and character of scent our own oils evoke.