Best Gissah Perfumes in the UAE

MOJ version	Gissah original	Gissah price, direct	MOJ from
La Luna	La Luna, 2023	AED 290 for 200ml	AED 32
Akoya+	Akoya, 2024	AED 290 for 200ml	AED 37
Blue Lava	Blue Lava, 2021, discontinued	No longer sold	AED 39
Orizon Sky	Horizon, 2024	AED 179 for 90ml	AED 48
1 & Only	One & Only, 2024	AED 290 for 200ml	AED 48

Who Gissah actually is

The first thing most articles get wrong is the country. Gissah is Kuwaiti. The company was founded in 2018 and brought its first products to market in 2019, and its own Arabic site tells you what the name means: قصة, story. That is not a transliteration of a made-up brand word, it is an ordinary Arabic noun, and the g spelling reflects how the letter ق is pronounced in Gulf speech rather than in formal Arabic.

The second thing is the ownership, and it is the part nobody writes about. On 23 August 2023, Saudi Arabia's Jadwa Investment acquired a 35 per cent equity stake in Gissah through its retail opportunities fund, stated publicly at the time as groundwork for a future listing on the Saudi exchange. That was reported by Arab News, Forbes Middle East, Gulf News and Jadwa's own release, among others. In January 2026 the house became the official fragrance partner of AS Roma. Whatever you think of the perfumes, this is not a small workshop operation. It is an institutionally backed business being prepared for public markets.

One more correction worth making, because it runs the other way from what people assume. Gissah is not a house that copies other houses. It is a house that other people copy. There is a whole secondary market of products sold openly as interpretations of Gissah Akoya and Gissah Horizon, which is the clearest signal there is that the originals set the reference rather than follow one. Our own versions below sit in exactly that category, and we say so plainly on every product page.

Three names almost everyone gets wrong

This matters more than it sounds, because if you search the wrong name you get the wrong product or no product at all.

It is Horizon, not Orizon. There is no Gissah fragrance called Orizon. Horizon launched in 2024 as part of a two-piece set called Legend of the Sky, alongside one called Nexus. So Sky is the name of the set, not of the fragrance. Our own product is listed as Orizon Sky, which compounds both errors, and we are fixing it.

It is One & Only, not 1 & Only. Gissah spells it out. Ours uses the numeral, which is our error and not the house's.

Blue Lava was never an eau de parfum. It launched in 2021 as a fragrance mist, an all-over body spray, which is a much lighter format than the bottles it gets listed beside. It is also no longer sold through Gissah's own storefronts, in the UAE, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. It survives on third-party resellers and on stale listings that have not been updated.

There is a fourth, softer one: La Luna is sometimes La Luna Valley, depending on which page you land on, including on Gissah's own site. Both are in use. We have gone with La Luna.

Gissah's own pages disagree with themselves

If you have ever tried to check a Gissah note list and come away confused, you were not doing it wrong. Most Gissah product pages carry two separate note blocks, and on several fragrances they describe what sounds like two different perfumes.

La Luna is the clearest case. One block gives an oriental ambery woody build of incense, raspberry and apricot over cotton candy, sandalwood and guaiac wood, finishing on patchouli, tonka and amber. The other block on the same page gives a woody citrus sweet build of berries and citrus aurantium over praline, cinnamon and orris, finishing on Madagascar vanilla, amber and sandalwood. The top notes have nothing in common. One & Only does the same thing, offering bergamot, passion fruit and peach in one place and mandarin, orange flower and heliotrope in the other. Akoya cannot decide between blackcurrant and raspberry, and gives a different fragrance family in each block.

Only two of the fragrances we looked at are internally consistent: Imperial Valley and Horizon. Where the blocks conflict below, we have gone with the reading that independent sources corroborate, and said so.

The house credits no perfumer for any of its fragrances and publishes no launch years on its own product pages. The years in this guide come from other sources and are labelled where they rest on a single one.

What Gissah costs in the UAE

Three facts, and the third is the useful one.

Ounass carries no Gissah. Bloomingdale's UAE carries no Gissah. Faces carries exactly one Gissah fragrance, Mavro, at AED 895 for the 200ml. Gissah's own UAE store sells that same 200ml Mavro for AED 290. That is a difference of 209 per cent on an identical bottle, and both figures were read off the product pages rather than a category grid.

The practical takeaway is that if you want the originals, buy them from Gissah directly. Most of the 200ml bottles sit at AED 290 there, including Akoya, Imperial Valley, La Luna, One & Only and Hudson Valley, while Horizon is AED 179 for 90ml. Anything materially above that is a markup rather than a market price.

The five, with the MOJ versions

1. La Luna

The cheapest way in and the most distinctive build of the five. Incense sits in the opening next to raspberry and apricot, which is an odd pairing on paper and works better than it reads, then cotton candy and gaiac wood take the middle before amberwood, tonka and patchouli close it. It is sweet without being childish, because the incense keeps pulling against the sugar. This is the reading Gissah's own primary note block gives, and it is the one we have built to.

2. Akoya+

The one the secondary market treats as the benchmark. Raspberry, orange oil and bergamot open it, caramel and jasmine sit over lavender in the middle, and sandalwood, patchouli and leatherwood carry the end. The caramel is what people remember, but the leatherwood underneath is what stops it turning into dessert. Worth knowing: this is the reading that independent reviewers and the house's secondary note block agree on, against a primary block that says blackcurrant instead of raspberry. There is no Akoya flanker, whatever you may have read. Gissah sells the same juice in 200ml and 15ml and nothing else.

3. Blue Lava

Read the section above before you buy this one, because the context changes what it is. Gissah's Blue Lava was a fragrance mist rather than an eau de parfum, and it is no longer sold through the house's own stores. So our version is not an alternative to something you could otherwise buy today, it is one of the few remaining ways to reach that profile at all, and in a stronger format than the original came in. Bergamot, berries and apple open it, patchouli and lavender sit over cedar, and vanilla, leather, amber and oud finish it. One note on our own copy: the product page calls it an aromatic fougère, which is not right, because none of the materials that define a fougère are in it. Judge it by the notes rather than the label.

4. Orizon Sky

Our name for it is wrong and we have said so, but the fragrance behind it is the cleanest-documented thing Gissah makes. Horizon launched in 2024 in the Legend of the Sky pair, and four independent sources give the same pyramid: yuzu over violet, lavender over red amber, then sandalwood and tonka. That is a fresh aromatic with a soft sweet base rather than a citrus that dries out to nothing, and the tonka is why it lasts longer than the opening suggests. It is the only fragrance in this group that suits daytime and office wear, and at AED 179 for 90ml it is also the cheapest Gissah original.

5. 1 & Only

The women's entry in the set, and the fruitiest of the five at the top. Passionfruit, bergamot and peach open it, caramel and jasmine sit over geranium, and white musk, patchouli and amber close it. The caramel puts it in the same family as Akoya+ but the passionfruit keeps it brighter and less woody, so if you found Akoya too heavy this is the one to try. Again we have followed Gissah's primary note block; its secondary block offers mandarin, orange flower and heliotrope instead, which is a different perfume.

The one for your room rather than your skin

Imperial Valley is arguably the best known thing Gissah makes after Akoya, and it is the fragrance whose note list every source agrees on: davana, Italian bergamot and pink pepper over white amber, African rosemary and oud, finishing on musk, leather and Haitian vetiver. What we carry for it right now is a 250ml room and car spray at AED 57 rather than a wearable bottle. If that is what you want, it is here. If you want it on skin, wait, because the eau de parfum version is not available at the moment and we would rather tell you that than sell you the spray as a substitute.

How to choose between them

If you want sweet and unusual, La Luna. If you want the one that set the reference, Akoya+. If you want something for daytime and work, Orizon Sky. If you want fruit rather than wood, 1 & Only. If you liked Blue Lava and cannot find it any more, ours is the practical answer.

On size, the 30ml is the sensible first purchase across all five, because these are gourmand-leaning fragrances and they are not for everyone. If you already know you get on with caramel and amber, the 100ml is where the price per millilitre drops sharply. And if you are new to the whole category, our explainer on what inspired perfumes are covers how they are made and what they are not.

For neighbouring reading, La Luna, Akoya+ and 1 & Only all sit with the best gourmand perfumes, since caramel and sugar are what all three are built around, while the oud in Blue Lava and Imperial Valley puts those two closer to the best oud perfumes. The full range of our interpretations lives in designer inspired perfumes.