A LA ROSE

12/11/15

Damascena Rose. Bergamot. Orange. Violet. Magnolia Blossom. Cedar. Musk. Centifolia Rose.

Having taken a hiatus from the world of cyber-reviews for the last few months, I have been itching to do what I love best and return to the written word to share all my excitement and nausea and everything in-between for the scents I have been smelling in the interim. Barring losing my sense of smell over the last week or so due to a cold, I have been indulging in an interesting spectrum of scents, but ‘A La Rose’ was such a delicious find that I wanted to turn the limelight to it first of all.  Today was the day when I literally skidded to a halt on my bedroom floor and said, “Enough! I must write!”

Before initial application, I didn’t have a high hope. Orange-based citrus has a knack of turning sour on my skin, and when that happens, it is difficult for me to differentiate one perfume from another. It’s just a world of sour pain.  Softened and tamed with the addition of Grasse’s most famous and exquisite offering: Centifolia, or rose de mai, in the base and Damascena rose from Bulgaria producing a sparkling and airy fruity top note complemented by juicy orange citrus, A la Rose is exquisitely feminine, down to the presentation of the perfume in the bottle; a delicately-hued pink potion, so soft and pretty that it looks like it was brewed by fairy folk. There is nothing garish, sugary or too horribly pink about this. Fear not that it would be the eye-candy grab of some rampaging teen on the search for something pretty (meaning vanilla and suffocatingly sweet). True, it’s not a unisex scent, true, there is a talcum-softness to the flowers, and the base is woody, floral, and gentle. We can also be aware that it is not the most punchy rose in the lineup; I don’t think it’s going to have anyone dropping to their knees and salivating with lust, unlike some of the dark and witchy rose fragrances (See La Fille de Berlin) I have tried. It’s summery, universal and light, strikingly elegant and bursting with freshness. Overall, it got my arse in gear again to focus on doing that which I love: sharing the experience and stories of perfume-telling with a wider audience than myself, and that to me is worth a whole season’s worth of harvesting those astounding Grasse roses.

Rating: 4 roly polys in the plucked Grasse flower petals before you get chased off with a big stick and a pack of hounds.