In 2006, Bvlgari launched Rose Essentielle with Voile de Jasmin and the reissue of Bvlgari Pour Femme, in matching bottles. All the fragrances have now been discontinued, but the pleasing shape of their bottles has been continued in the Bvlgaria Splendida line. More on that later! Continue reading
Stella was the first fragrance launched by Stella McCartney, English fashion designer and daughter of Beatle Paul McCartney. (I’ll never say “ex-Beatle” — once a Beatle, always a Beatle!). The version I have is Stella 2014, the relaunch of the 2003 original. Continue reading
Serge Lutens’ La Fille de Berlin is a straight-up Rose with a capital R. The first hint of what you’ll smell is the color of the juice in the bottle — a deep, purply red. Continue reading
The Perfumers Workshop Tea Rose is something of a legend in the fragrance world: people seem either to love it or hate it, mostly depending on how they feel about strong rose scents, but most agree on a few things: it is cheap-cheap-cheap; it is STRONG; it is a linear rose, without much else going on. If you have a half-hour to spare and want to be amused, go to Basenotes.net and read the reviews there! And if you like rose fragrances but are looking for a bargain beauty, try Tea Rose. You can still buy 4 fl. oz., or 120 ml, for less than $15. Continue reading
White Rose & Lemon Leaves is one of the fragrances released by Jo Loves, the brand launched by Jo Malone in 2011 when she was able to do so following the sale of the “Jo Malone” brand to Estee Lauder. Continue reading
For our next “Rose de Mai” (not really, as that is the name of a particular rose, Rosa centifolia — I’m just using the term because it is May!), let’s try 4160 Tuesdays’ Killer Rose. Continue reading
In past years, I have done a “May Muguet Marathon” and tried to post daily in May about one of my favorite flowers and fragrance notes, the beautiful lily of the valley, or muguet. This year, I didn’t think I had enough new to discuss about muguet fragrances every day. So, dear readers, I asked and you answered. “Roses de Mai” it is! Thank you, NoseProse!
For my first Roses de Mai Marathon post, let us sample Nicolai Parfumeur Createur’s Rose Royale. Continue reading
Welcome to the weekly Perfume Chat Room, perfumistas! I envision this chat room as a weekly drop-in spot online, where readers may ask questions, suggest fragrances, tell others their SOTD, comment on new releases or old favorites, and respond to each other. The perennial theme is fragrance, but we can interpret that broadly. This is meant to be a kind space, so please try not to give or take offense, and let’s all agree to disagree when opinions differ. In fragrance as in life, your mileage may vary! YMMV.
Today is April 24, and it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, to quote Mr. Rogers. Continue reading
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! That includes this household, and the air is full of festive fragrances, starting with the fresh balsam Christmas tree and wreaths on the front of the house. My oldest daughter baked a model of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in gingerbread (!!) for a local Shakespeare theater, using Mary Berry’s recipe from the Great British Baking Show, with extra ginger for her ginger-loving mother (me); its scent is still wafting through the house from its place of honor in our dining room.
Shakespeare’s Globe in gingerbread, on display in theater lobby
Soon, I will set up the slow cooker with our annual Christmas Eve dinner: a Greek stew called “stifado”, which combines lamb or beef with red wine, spices like cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon, onions, tomatoes, and currants. We began using this recipe in the days when we went to two consecutive afternoon services on Christmas Eve because our three children were in two different choirs at church, singing in different services. We could leave the slow cooker to do its work, and when we came home, dinner was ready for hungry kids and the whole house smelled like red wine, fruit, and spices. Then there’s the scent of mulled cider (real cider, thank you, not the clear apple juice that gets labelled as cider during the holidays; the non-alcoholic kind we used to buy from a local orchard when I was a child).
Ina Garten’s Hot Mulled Cider
Add to those the fragrance of scented candles and wax melts, according to our mood, and the paperwhite narcissi in a pot, given to us every year by a gardening friend, and each room of the house has its own perfume. Somehow, they don’t clash. I haven’t yet tried the candle labeled “White Balsam”, but it sounds delectable: vanilla and mint combined with balsam fir. And of course, I still haven’t decided which of my many personal fragrances to wear today and tonight! I plan to make the most out of the day, fragrance-wise; I’ll choose one to wear until we get dressed for afternoon church (thankfully, we now attend only one service, although I actually didn’t mind unplugging from the world and attending two in a row); one for church; and one for when we sit down to a festive family dinner and the rest of the evening.
Spode’s Christmas Rose
Decisions, decisions! I now own a bottle of Caron’s Nuit de Noel, so I think that will have to be one of my choices, probably for this evening. Thinking of Goutal’s Nuit Etoilee for church, as it will be dark out when we emerge, but I could go with something based on incense instead, like Tauerville’s Incense Flash. A warm or spicy rose is always a good option, especially as our church is often filled with dark red roses and evergreens at Christmastime and my festive china has Christmas roses (hellebores) on it, so perhaps Aramis’ Calligraphy Rose or David Yurman Limited Edition, which beautifully combines roses with suede, oud, saffron, sandalwood, and a touch of raspberry. I often amp up the roses in my rose-centered fragrances with a dab of Abdul Samad al Qurashi’s Taif Roses, which my husband brought me back from a business trip to Dubai some years ago. Montale’s Intense Cafe is a strong contender for the fragrance I will wear before; it has a beautiful rosy heart, and it is one of the few fragrances I own that has prompted a complete stranger to approach me to ask what it was. On the other hand, I’ve been wearing Jo Malone’s Tudor Rose & Amber a lot lately; it is a beautiful, warm rose, and it lasts much longer than many Jo Malone scents without being intrusive or overwhelming. And then there’s Christmas Day to consider!
What fragrances mean Christmas or other winter festivities to you? Will you wear something special for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? Are you hoping for any special fragrance gifts this Christmas?
Some readers of the blog “Now Smell This” expressed surprise that my husband is a much-appreciated enabler of my perfume hobby. He really is, in the kindest way, including that he found the entrance to Aquaflor for me on a small Florentine side street when I had given up and thought it was closed!
Aquaflor Firenze is another magnificent apothecary/perfumery in Florence, Italy. It sells house-made fragrances, body and face creams, herbal bath products and other fragranced goodies, shaving products, soaps, and accessories; it is very close to the church of Santa Croce, located in the ground floor of the Palazzo Serristori Corsini Antinori.
Courtyard of Palazzo Antinori, Florence
My husband is the hero of this tale, because I had found the courtyard of the palazzo, which had a French door into the store, but it was roped off and I couldn’t see any staff, so I disappointedly told him that the store seemed to be closed. He wandered further up the street, in the opposite direction of how we would normally return to our bed and breakfast, and called back to me that he had found the entrance and the store was indeed open! This is heroic, because he has bad knees and flat feet, and he had already reached the limit of his ability to walk on paved and cobbled streets, which one does all day in Florence. He was rewarded when we entered the store and behold! there were comfortable leather armchairs and couches, clearly intended for footsore companions. So wise of the store owners! I would not have stayed as long and maybe would not have made the purchases I did if he had not been able to sit and rest his feet.
Aquaflor Firenze boutique
Aquaflor sells most of its products in the actual store only, but it does now have a beautiful website where one can buy its fragrances, including a number of home fragrance diffusers. Perfumer Sileno Cheloni states on the website that they were reluctant to have a website, since they envision Aquaflor as primarily a destination and a sensory experience (which you can read about in more detail here), but they have the website so that aficionados can, for example, re-order a fragrance they already have and love.
All the fragrances are created by perfumers Sileno Cheloni and Nicola Bianchi. Fragrantica lists 40 fragrances, the earliest from 2015. After much testing and pondering, I chose one of their sets of a 100 ml bottle and a 30 ml bottle. You decide which ones you want, and the set costs less than if one bought the two separately. I chose the large size of Rosae and the small size of Tzigana. Today, I’ll write about Rosae.
Rosae is an unconventional rose fragrance. The only notes listed for it are rose and mint. It has a high concentration of fragrance, although it is not described as an “extrait”; based on its longevity on my skin, though, I would estimate its concentration as above 20%. It lasts at least 24 hours on my skin and only departed after I had taken a long shower. Its sillage is deceiving; I didn’t think it was more than moderate, i.e. detectable only within a couple of feet of me, but one day when I wore it to work, a colleague walked into my office and immediately exclaimed how good it smelled although she was several feet away from me. I have adjusted my spray pattern accordingly! And that will make my bottle last longer, which is a good thing because I really love Rosae.
Fragrantica categorizes it as “rose, green, aromatic, and fresh spicy,” and that seems right. At first spray, you get a powerful but fresh rose, very reminiscent of the beautiful attar of Taif roses my husband brought me back some time ago from Dubai, which tells me Rosae contains a high concentration of rose oil, specifically extract of Rosa damascena, or the Damask Rose. (Taif roses are a variety of the species Rosa damascena).
Rosa damascena; image from www.sciencedirect.com.
One small spray at the base of my throat, and Rosae wafts strongly up to my nose. There is a liveliness to its scent, which I attribute to the mint. A combination of rose and mint is much more complex than one might think from that short list of notes. Roses themselves contain well over 100 different organic compounds, whose volatility, emitted from the flowers or from rose extract, creates the fragrance we smell. This is why different roses can smell quite different from each other, while still completely recognizable as “rose”; some are more fruity, with notes like apple or peach, others are very lemony, some are more green, etc. “Mint” can refer to a large family of herbal plants, formally known as “Lamiaceae”, which includes not only spearmint and peppermint, but also many other garden herbs, such as basil, oregano, sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, and lavender. Like roses, members of the mint plant family contain many organic compounds, which makes them highly aromatic. The liveliness and complexity of Rosae suggest to me that some of those herbs and their relatives are also present, playing supporting roles. I definitely pick up a whiff of sweet basil and fresh thyme, and possibly also lavender and Clary sage.
Rosae feels linear to me, and in the case of such a beautiful, natural fragrance, I appreciate that. Complexity abounds in this scent without the intrusion of many other substances. Given my colleague’s delighted reaction to it from several feet away, hours after I had applied Rosae in the morning, I have no complaints about its development! But if you are seeking a rose-based fragrance that will become something quite different over time, this is not it.
Aquaflor Firenze is well worth a visit if you ever get to Florence. On my visit, the staff were helpful and knowledgeable, and very willing to suggest fragrances to try. The store itself is very beautiful, and you won’t want to miss the frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Croce nearby. Just keep looking for the store’s entrance if at first you don’t find it! It is on the Borgo Santa Croce, and the actual door is down the street from the main entrance into the Palazzo Antinori. It has many wonderful items for sale besides its beautiful fragrances, too.
How do you feel about linear fragrances? Do you have a favorite rose-centric fragrance?
Aquaflor Firenze
Serenity Now Scents and Sensibilities 