Category: Guides

Nine of ten. Hectic carries every material Louis Vuitton publishes for Imagination except one, and adds nothing of its own. That is the closest match in the Bujairami range we stock, and it is worth explaining how we arrived at the number rather than just asserting it.

How we counted

Most comparisons in this category give you a percentage. Those are invented. Nobody outside the laboratory knows either formula, so a figure like 94 percent is somebody’s impression wearing a lab coat.

We do something plainer. Take the original’s published note list, count how many of those materials also appear in the Bujairami, and show the fraction. You can check the arithmetic yourself, which is the entire point.

The two side by side

Read across and you see the two things worth knowing. Every material in the right column appears in the left one except the orange. And the two houses arrange them differently: Bujairami put ginger in the opening and black tea in the heart, where Louis Vuitton put ginger in the heart and black tea in the base.

What the arrangement changes

Same materials in a different order is not the same fragrance, and this is where a note count stops being useful.

Ginger in the opening means Hectic has a dry warmth under the citrus from the first minute. Imagination holds the ginger back, so it opens brighter and takes longer to turn spicy. Black tea in the heart rather than the base means Hectic shows its tea earlier and then lets the woods close over it, while Imagination keeps the tea underneath as the thing you are left with.

The missing Sicilian orange matters less than you would think, because Hectic still has citron, bergamot and neroli doing citrus work in the first two tiers. What you lose is a particular rounded sweetness in the opening. Side by side you would notice. On its own, most people would not know anything was absent.

A warning about the note lists you will find elsewhere

This section exists because we got it wrong ourselves first, and the correction is useful to anyone comparing these two.

There are two different note lists for Hectic in circulation. One widely quoted database publishes a ten-note list for it which is identical to Imagination’s, down to all five regional qualifiers and the exact tier placement. Bujairami’s own storefront publishes a shorter nine-note list with no qualifiers and black tea in the heart.

Those cannot both be right, and the version that matches the original perfectly is the one to be suspicious of. Entries on open databases are submitted by the public, and a pyramid filed under the wrong fragrance tends to stay there. If we had used that list, we would have reported a flawless ten of ten match and the evidence would have been circular, because the list itself came from the fragrance we were comparing against.

We use what the manufacturer publishes about its own product. That is why this page says nine of ten and other pages say more.

Is it worth it

On this pairing, yes, with the usual caveat about what you are buying.

You are not getting Imagination cheaply. You are getting a fragrance built from almost the same shopping list, assembled by a different house with different materials and a different arrangement. The gap shows up in refinement and in the first ten minutes on skin, which is where the better materials in the original announce themselves.

If you already own and wear Imagination, nine of ten means Hectic is not an addition to your shelf. It is a cheaper version of something you have. Keep it for the car, the gym bag or the desk drawer.

If you have smelled Imagination, liked it and never seriously considered buying it, this is the closest thing we stock to the experience.

Before you order

A note count tells you what a fragrance was built from. It does not tell you whether you will want it on your skin for eight hours, and it cannot account for how your own skin treats the materials. Two fragrances can share every note and still behave differently on different people.

You can read the full breakdown on the Hectic product page, and see how the rest of the range maps to its originals in our guide to Bujairami and the fragrances it names.

This comparison describes scent profile only, counted from both houses’ own published note lists. Imagination and Louis Vuitton are trade marks of their respective owners. Hectic is Bujairami’s own composition in its own bottle and packaging, distinct from the original in every respect. Bujairami Scents is an independent UK retailer and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Louis Vuitton.

Almost every house in this corner of the market leaves you guessing. You buy something, you smell something familiar, and you spend an evening reading forum threads trying to work out what it was built from. Bujairami does the opposite. It puts the original in the product name.

That one decision tells you more about the brand than any amount of marketing copy, and it is also where the complications start. Here is who they are, what the naming actually means, and the one thing in it that is not what it looks like.

Who Bujairami are

Bujairami describes itself as an Australian-headquartered fragrance company specialising in inspired-by perfumes, with operations in the United Arab Emirates and Canada. It states that its range is Australian owned and manufactured.

The part you can check without taking anyone’s word for it is the shopfront. Bujairami runs eight physical stores across Australia: the flagship on Guildford Road in Sydney, kiosks at Wetherill Park, Macquarie Centre and Bankstown, and further stores in Moonee Ponds, Mermaid Beach, Stones Corner and Northbridge. Four states, eight doors. That is a working retail business rather than a label that exists only on a website, which is more than can be said for a lot of houses in this corner of the market.

The brand does not publish a founder or a founding date anywhere on its own site. Adam Bujairami is credited as the perfumer behind the range, so the name is attached to the actual work and not just the company registration.

Of the twenty one we currently stock, sixteen are extrait de parfum and five are eau de parfum. That ratio is unusual. Most houses working this way default to eau de parfum because it is cheaper to make.

The thing that makes them different

Bujairami publish the fragrance each scent was built from, in the product title itself, on their own storefronts.

This matters more than it sounds. When a retailer tells you something smells like a designer fragrance, that is the retailer’s opinion. When wearers on a forum agree about it, that is consensus, which is better but still guesswork. When the manufacturer prints it on the listing, the comparison stops being anybody’s interpretation and becomes the brand’s own claim about its own product.

The catch, and nobody else is telling you this

Several Bujairami listings read along the lines of “Ombre Nomade Louis Vuitton – Extrait” or “Althair Parfums De Marly – Extrait”. It is natural to read that as pointing at an extrait version of the original.

There is no extrait version of those originals. The word describes Bujairami’s own concentration, not a product the other house has ever released.

So read those names as two separate pieces of information stuck together. The designer name tells you what the scent was built from. The concentration tells you about the bottle in your hand, not about anything the original house sells.

This is worth getting right in both directions. If you go looking for Louis Vuitton Ombre Nomade Extrait to compare against, you will not find one, because it does not exist. Louis Vuitton’s main line is eau de parfum, sold only through their own boutiques and never wholesale. Their Les Extraits collection is seven separate fragrances with their own names, not stronger versions of existing ones.

The range we stock, and what each one is built from

Eighteen of the twenty one carry a stated inspiration. Three do not, and we have left those blank rather than inventing one.

Nine of the twenty one trace back to Louis Vuitton alone, which is close to half the stocked range coming from a single house. Since Louis Vuitton do not sell through any third party at all, there is no cheaper official route to those scents. That is a large part of why this particular range moves.

Two names, one original

Mad Love and Madness are both built from Louis Vuitton Ombre Nomade. This is not a duplicate listing or a mistake. Mad Love is the extrait and Madness is the eau de parfum, so you are choosing a concentration rather than a different scent.

The extrait will sit closer to the skin at first and last considerably longer. The eau de parfum opens brighter and projects harder early on. Neither is the better one in the abstract. If you want it to still be there at the end of a working day, take the extrait. If you want people to notice it when you walk in, take the eau de parfum.

The three with nothing stated

Vice City, Chic Wood and Nice and Nude carry no stated inspiration from the brand, and all three are eau de parfum.

We are not going to guess on their behalf. If Bujairami have not named an original, any claim you read about what these three are modelled on is somebody’s nose and nothing more. Treat them as the house’s own work until the brand says otherwise.

Where to start

If you already know an original you love and cannot justify its price, use the table above and go straight to the row. That is the whole point of a brand that names its sources, and it is a far better starting point than browsing blind.

If you are coming to this fresh, the extraits are where the range is strongest, simply because that is where most of the catalogue sits and where the concentration does the most work.

One honest caution. A stated inspiration tells you what a fragrance was built from. It does not promise the two are indistinguishable, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling you something. Materials, proportions and how a scent behaves on skin all differ. Expect a recognisable interpretation rather than a swap.

Every comparison on this page describes scent profile only and reflects Bujairami’s own published product naming. Each fragrance named as an original is the trade mark of its respective owner, and each Bujairami fragrance is the house’s own composition in its own bottle and packaging, distinct from the original in every respect. Bujairami Scents is an independent UK retailer and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any of the houses named here.