Rose Anonyme

From time to time decision of buying perfume could be a wrong decision. We are very impressed by the smell in the first minutes and we think we are in love with it. Unfortunately after splaying it all over the body many things are going wrong, the heart of fragrance is not as we were expecting, the base is boring. Than the perfume will spend rest of its life on the cabinet shelf. Rose anonyme was my almost blind buy. Almost because I got the sample and after few minutes I decided, this is the fragrance for my vacation 2012. So I spent money for huge bottle, 200 ml big. Going home I had terrible feeling I did another horrible choice, because rose fragrances are difficult and the only few I know are worth attention. Fortunately I was stupid and really wrong, my decision was one of the best I did during last few years. Rose anonyme is a miracle in the perfumery world where roses an on the stage. Rose with a lot of sweet and very juicy lemon tart. So delicious and pleasant I can't resistant and I'm spending hours smelling myself and my clothes, people around asking constantly what is so beautiful, where it does come from. I don't remember to be more proud wearing other fragrances. The beginning is delicious because of vanilla, the heart because of lemon and oranges and the end is another story, deep mysterious and woody because of touch of oud. Rose is present all the time and its concentration doesn't change too much. In my opinion this is very unique to keep one ingredient so stable while others evolve so much. Another miracle is the lack of musk which i love generally but hate in rose fragrances. In RA the musk doesn't exist and this is so wonderful. There is also something else giving the RA different dimension during development. This is wonderful papyrus. I'm saying wonderful because papyrus is extremely difficult ingredient that can improve quality of perfume, but it can also kill it making completely unwearable. Papyrus in RA is dry and mysterious, not harsh at all. It doesn't have earthy and detritus like smell. Here it is very grassy and oriental in the same time. It gives coumarin like effects - I love it. Rose anonyme is perfect fragrance for any season but more suitable for spring and late summer or fall when days are not too hot helping fragrance to develop slowly. I'm afraid that in hot weather RA will disappear to quickly because it not a silage monster - it is perfect as cologne and it is even stronger and better than many EDT but it is not EDP for sure. So I would recommend to buy regular 200 ml bottle rather than miniature the company offers, 30 ml. RA is truly unisex fragrance it doesn't have sex. It is perfect for anyone who like very good professionally done perfume. I can say it perfect for beginners in the fragrance world and people with fully developed taste. I can imagine Tilda Swinton wearing it as her signature fragrance.

Atelier Rose Anonyme is a lovely rose and papyrus fragrance, with not much of the powerful bitter oud edge to my nose despite the note votes here. The rose is very natural and a bit dusty smelling and the papyrus is, well, like wet paper. The combination is, surprisingly, beautiful. There are some incense/patchouli sorts of notes in the base that complement the rose-papyrus very nicely. A strange and illuminating thing has happened to me with rose. When I first became obsessed by perfumes, I disliked rose, even hated it, especially when it was a dominant note. I am not sure why, but it made me gag a bit, perhaps some childhood association with bad shellfish or overdosed old ladies who had lost their sense of smell. Besides, Real Men don't wear rose because it smells girlie. Still, I knew many people love rose, so I decided to find a rose-dominated scent that I could tolerate - eventually I settled on Yver Rocher Rose Absolue (now discontinued), whose only floral note is rose but with a rich melange of oriental notes to back it up. Since I have always loved rich oriental base notes, they somehow made the rose top and middle accessible to me. At first I kind of liked Rose Absolue (amazing enough given that most rose made me want to throw up), and then I liked it quite a lot, and then I LOVED it. It took many months and wears for this transformation to happen. It was still my only real rose perfume, but I decided to take the plunge and see if I liked others. And I did! My olfactory response to rose has largely reversed. Now I find a rich dusty complexity to a good rose note where before I found cloying old lady. Astonishingly, I even like some rose near soliflores, such as Perfumer's Workshop Tea Rose (my favorite because it is dirt cheap and smells divine) and Serge Lutens Sa Majeste La Rose. Knock me over with a feather.

Rose Anonyme. Gorgeous. Ideally I should stop this review right there as that says it all and should be recommendation enough to go get this juice. If you want the standard Rose, Patchouli and oud combo taken to it's brightest, lightest, freshest point, this is it. When someone says Rose, patchouli and oud, the first thing that comes to mind is Black Aoud and countless other middle eastern inspired frags of it's type, all heavy handed crude bully frags that slap you in the face for the most part. Rose Anonyme by contrast is a lover that kisses your cheek and wraps you in a hug all day long. It is the absolute other end of the spectrum you can get with the same notes. It is the addition of the bergamot and papyrus notes that does this and the ginger provides balance. And for being such a lightish, airy frag, this projects and lasts a long time. I put on just 2 sprays to the chest and sat down for breakfast and My Mum said your cologne is very strong which was frankly surprising. But this initial beast mode projection settles down after about an hour. Longevity likewise is excellent, 8 hours plus on me. If you are a rose lover of any kind, get this. If you are somebody who is turned off by heavy rose frags also get this. This is balanced really well and even guys who are normally leery of rose or consider it too feminine can pull this off. The only caveat I would state is that if you are mostly into heavy ouds, then this wont float your boat. For me personally, It's one of the best darn things I have smelled in a long, long time and proves once again that even the most overused banal notes in perfumery can provide magic in the hands of the right perfumer.

"Earthy Rose with a twist!" is how I would describe Rose Anonyme. I received a bottle of this for my birthday in October and have been wearing it this past Winter. At first I was not sure about it but have come to love it. At first spritz it is very woody Oud with a burst of Bergamot. Then the Rose and Ginger come into the mix very quickly. At this point Rose Anonyme has a curious vibration that is serious and playful at the same time. There is a sweetness from the Opoponox that is noticeable but not over the top. Just enough to make it pleasant. The Patchouli is not screaming but present. Then there is the subtle green note of the Papyrus. That is probably what I enjoy the most. This is present all through the dry down with the prominent Rose and very rich but not heavy Oud. I can see how some people may find it a bit hard to handle upon first application but given time to develop on the skin it becomes enticing. It reminds me of walking through an old garden that has become overgrown but is still thriving. Where an old tree has a fallen branch and the roses bushes need pruning but are flowering. There is a ginger plant with some dead shoots with the dried flower crowns causing them to bend releasing the spicy scent. There is an herb garden with patchouli bursting out of its raised bed. Then there is a quaint little pond where the papyrus has taken over with frogs swimming and dragonflies flying above the water. A very curious yet restful place indeed. This is my take on this very unusual fragrance. I find that it has sillage that is moderate and its longevity is about four to five hours on me. I give this a 10/10.

Rose Anonyme was not love at first sight for me. I got it for Christmas and it wasn't what I expected. I was expecting this very vivid rose and it seemed like all I got was incense and papyrus. I wasn't wowed so I put it away and didn't try it again until the end of March. I decided to give it another try and to my surprise...it was love at SECOND sight. How did I miss the beauty in this the first go round? I think sometimes when we expect one thing and get another, it confuses our brain and we aren't able to appreciate it in the same way. Because on the second wearing I wasn't really "expecting" anything and just put it on and headed out without giving it much thought. Then BOOM this fascinating smell hit me about 20 minutes later. Unlike others, I do not get a realistic rose smell...the rose is more like a surreal rose backdrop for an exotic, almost wine-like, lush, magical concoction that is difficult to pinpoint exactly. It is almost like the scent itself remains anonymous. You know all these notes are there but you can't pinpoint them or touch them. It reminds me of those dreams where you are reaching for something and every time you try to grab it, it disappears in your hand. But you can see it and it is so real and vivid but...not attainable. To me, Rose Anonyme is like a muted vision of a much larger scent...like this gigantic vibrant portrait of rose, incense, papyrus, oud, bergamot and patchouli that you are looking at through a cloudy window. It is so beautiful and you desperately want to know more but it is determined to remain partially anonymous. Which makes you want it even more.