Mohammad Hilal's eyes take on a faraway look when he reminisces about his childhood.
Seated in Saks Fifth Avenue's VIP Lounge in BurJuman, Hilal recalls about how aeroplanes always held a special fascination for him, even as a child. "As a boy I remember rolling down the windows of my father's car and making my hand a pretend-aeroplane that would whirr along the skies of my imagination," smiles Hilal.
The need to soar goaded him to take up a career in flying. But the journey of this flight of fancy crash landed. He flew for a major airline for about eight years before realising that flying, like any other profession, was all about rules and regulations. While he loved the feeling that came from flying an aircraft, it dampened his spirit that it came with a drill that took away from the creativity and inventiveness he yearned for. As he mulled over his predicament, he was also deep into a fascination for fragrances, a hobby he pursued with zeal. The beginnings of this hobby lay in his own heritage.
Scent of this man
"In a typical Emirati household, there are always ingredients like herbs and spices lying around. Oud, bukhoor, dokhoon - fragrances are an integral part of our traditions and it seemed like a perfectly natural thing to start experimenting with them. This hobby of mine gradually began to define who I was," Hilal says.
While studying chemical engineering in the US, he'd give vials of scents he had combined to his fellow students. "As you can imagine, no one had been given a gift like that before!"
Why did he abandon flying when it was his deepest desire as a young man? "To be creative you have to be crazy, and I could see no future, indeed no pleasure in continuing in a field where all I could do was clock in and clock out and follow the rule book every day," he says. "So after some thought I realised I would rather be giving my hobby - of combining and experimenting with fragrances - all my time. I decided to turn full-time to designing fragrances. I then focused on opening the Hind Al Oud boutique shops from where I launched some quintessentially Arabian perfumes for the first time in 2001."
Hind Al Oud was a runaway success. It bagged the ‘Best Traditional Niche Fragrances' award bestowed by the Dubai Economic Department in 2004.
Creating a unique blend
"A good perfumer," he says, "should give people what they need rather than what they want or think they want. Smells are integral to our culture. Arabian perfume oils have been an integral part of home use since time immemorial. What I did was to blend notes or fragrances that create something which has associations… smells are a kind of tracker; you feel happy or sad, remember good things and bad ones, based entirely on your olfactory senses."
Of his strategic plans he says, "I guess we never aim to make perfumes for the mass market. I do believe that there are leaders and followers in every equation. This does not undermine the followers in any way, or give the leader greater powers. Without the followers, there is no leader. Yet, (followers) are aspirational, always trying to do what the leader does. If we appeal to the leaders in this equation, we have made considerable headway, as the followers will only do what he does," he says.
While success is extremely desirable, he tempers his business sense with conscious control. "It is important not to get overexposed. There is nothing more disconcerting than discovering that everyone at a party is wearing the same fragrance as you. You will never buy that perfume again. One reason why it is important to be unique and customised is that we try to take individual preferences seriously." A reason why traditional Arabian perfumes are now gaining ground over their international counterparts, he says.
When it comes to the raison d'être of fragrance creation, his belief is: "All this focus on ingredients - whether Arabian fragrances or Oriental - has more to do with marketing hype than reality. Fragrances have a soul connection. Women sometimes enjoy a fragrance created for men and vice-versa. Ingredients these days the world over are sourced from the same suppliers. What makes them Oriental, classic or French is the blend and the manner in which the specific country uses them," he says.
"Imitations are dime a dozen. What makes an artist's work unique is how much of the detail he has managed to capture."
Integral to the Emirati culture
Contrary to popular perception, Arabian fragrances have made their mark and found a niche. There is definitely a strong market for Arab and Oriental fragrances in the Middle East region, which was illustrated when his fragrances stole a march over more established French designer brands in boutiques like Paris Gallery recently.
"We have a market ratio of 2.5 to 1. What more can I say? These fragrances are a part of our tradition and culture; in many ways they represent who we are. For years we have taken or bought goods and services from the UK, the US, India, China… now perhaps is our time in the sun. This is the time to give back to the people of the world something that is uniquely regional in appeal and mood. In a sense, we are in the business of cultural exchange and human relationships where trust is the currency of exchange if you like," he smiles.
One for the country
Last year, for example, his company launched the UAE's very own fragrance on the occasion of the country's 38th national day. Aptly called December 2nd, the perfume was created within Hilal's second luxury brand - Ansfasic Dokhoon, and comprised a blend of scents with each or a group of scents reflecting characteristics of Dubai and the UAE. While plum and peach are the top notes of the perfume, rose, ylang ylang and jasmine form the middle notes, and vanilla, henna, musk and amber the base notes. Nearly 100,000 bottles of the fragrance were distributed to visitors and residents of the country during the celebrations. The fragrance was promoted in places as far away as the Maldives.
He is currently hard at work conceptualising and processing a fragrance that will represent Dubai, and separate ones for each of the seven emirates. "At the end of the day, this is not about publicity. It's about creating a unique brand for Dubai. We are aiming to create a scent that people will take away with them as the fragrance of Dubai, thereby recreating for them their memories of the time spent here," he says.
What are his personal favourites in fragrances? "Among Western perfumes, Contradiction by Calvin Klein is nice. Among the Oriental perfumes, I like the Indian Oud," he says, adding that oud is essentially a vital ingredient of most perfumes in this part of the world, with several tonnes needed to produce the smallest sample of perfume oil.
Designer by design
A brand connoisseur, his passion for design is reflected in his self-designed red-brown sandals that have a giant H-shaped gold buckle with gold embossing. "Initially people said it looked like a woman's footwear. Others said the colour was too bold. But within a year the same people came back and said: ‘It is awesome, where can we get one?' That is what image is all about."
He looks at himself as a cultural ambassador for his country, and hopes that the UAE will achieve its appointed place on the map, when it comes to recreating and promoting its heritage.
"For so many years, the Emirates have taken from the Western world... whether by way of raw materials or finished products, or even services and technology. I believe its time to give back to the rest of the world something that is truly Emirati and which evokes in them some pleasant memories of time spent here, or of the things they experienced in our beautiful country," he says.
The concept behind khaltat
"When it comes to fragrances just a beautiful bottle and packaging won't do it for you unless you also have a product that is unique and which people consider a stamp of their identity," says Hilal. "Which is why I conceptualised Khaltat. It is based on the principle that feelings and emotions provide the answers in life, not the reasons. It relies on the emotions that fragrances evoke in us, the passion, the wonderment and seduction of the senses they can bring about."
Khaltat, a blend of the deepest Oriental traditions, presented in a modern, trendy package, bringing together the best of both worlds to create an ideal fragrance for the modern man or woman of this region, "took four to five years of planning and R&D. Today we have two of the Khaltat fragrances in the market - Khaltat No 4, which focuses on the four elements of nature: earth, air, water and fire (with top notes of cinnamon, middle notes of saffron and rose, and base notes of vanilla and agarwood), and Khaltat No 8, which represents infinity, and has top notes of bergamot, middle notes of lavender and patchouli and base notes of sandalwood, making it a universal scent."
"We're presently running trials and experiments with 12, 20, 44…" says the perfumer, who has used Arabic numerals (now evolved as English numerals and used worldwide), replete with symbolism and meaning, to create a sight-smell connection.
