Bitter Rose, Broken Spear

I'm happy to return to sampling the D.S. & Durga niche brand and begin the Hylnds collection, and Bitter Rose, Broken Spear is definitely among the more appealing offerings from this quintet of fragrances based on notes breakdowns. It's a burnt woody rose, reminiscent in its woody resinousness of Bowmakers, which is mainly based off an acerbic woody resin itself. Here, rose is added to the mix, so it's not only burnt, lacquered woody but also smoldered flowers. It's another level of complexity from Bowmakers on the one hand, and on the other, a simple deviation or change in direction from Bowmakers. To its name, I wouldn't say that the element of rose is actually bitter, or that the smoky, woody, or resinous angles the fragrance lend bitterness of their own. Rather, any brightness from the floral side is supplanted by the darker elements, and while rose is a main player, it's nonetheless under a cloud of darkness. Performance is quite good, with much projection coming from a light application on the wrists of a 1ml sample vial, and longevity suggestively high given the limited diminution of the fragrance over some hours. Despite it feeling slightly redundant with Bowmakers, this might be something I still pine for, even at $180 for a 50ml. My collection is replete with rose, but this is certainly a different use of rose from anything I own. 8 out of 10

This one goes right into the "successful blind purchase" category. From the Hlynds collection of DS&Durga Bitter Rose Broken Spear. I'd say the most masculine take on a Rose perfume. Many would argue it's not even a Rose fragrance, and I agree. The Rose is a minimal touch to the composition. I like to categorize my perfumes into various families. This one goes on the Dark/Medieval brews list. An aromatic, bitter Rose is thrown in the pot with thyme and wildflowers, put on high heat, and left to brew. The armory chamber is dark and lit by only a few oil lamps. The oil smell permeates the air and mingles with the scent of incandescent metal brought to heat by blazing embers. The blacksmith shines his newly forged swords and plates, occasionally checking his rose brew and enjoying a whiff. Dark, with a powerful red, hot metal accord, as well as a lamp oil smell (if you ever played around with one of those, you know how it smells like), and the shy aromatic, spicy rose to pop in and out, honoring the perfume's name. If only the rest of their perfumes from the regular line would achieve this level of alchemy, quality, and originality. A unique perfume that is worth checking out. IG:@memory.of.scents

I like this - it's fascinating and unusual but still wearable. I try to avoid reading the marketing blurbs for fragrances because they're typically ridiculous (and this is no exception), but this really does remind me of damp winter woods in northern Britain. It comes across far more sour than bitter on my skin. The metallic, earthy rose is simply beautiful and complex. A mossy smokiness lasts for hours without being acrid. I won't pay $180 for a perfume, but damn, I love my sample.

If I could scent the sorrow, that falls on the shoulders with blackest veil of velvet consolation melancholia, it would reek of a mouldy cellar of the deepest crypt. Only source of heat is smouldering ember, yet it's not warm and inviting, but one that will soon turn into ashes. The rose, almost faint and mute is all about to wither in this cold underground cell, only to become a part of thick dust and ash.

It feels like I sniff around pine sap in the pine forest with burning smoke. Sometimes it smells very fresh and dry, and sometimes it's like I am on the mountain covered with fallen leaves partly wet partly rotten after rain in late Autumn. I couldn't catch any hint of rose, but when dry down I got remain of Noir de Noir by Tom Ford faintly.

The eponymous bitter rose is a scrap of red elegance adorning a sour, sweaty body of olive anger (like this literally smells like olives out of the jar at a distace). Once it cools down, the sour turns to sweet and the fragrance becomes much gentler while still retaining its personality. Good performance all around, this one's fun to wear

Picture coming home to a cabin in the woods after a long walk in a rainy and misty forest, thistles and heather clinging to your shoes and moist woolen sweater. Lighting the fireplace, pouring yourself a glass of whisky and reading an old book with yellowed pages. That's what Bitter Rose, Broken Spear smells like.

Never ceases to amaze me how differently we experience scents. For me, I get the rose, thistle, and larch in a wonderful combination which yields a very masculine rose. I have no problem wearing this anywhere.

Campfire smoke with a metallic twang...the flowers in here are all dry and burned up...this is not a floral perfume at all, but a deep, dark, smoky fire...a very unique and very wearable scent...love this...

I blind bought this recently from DS&Durga during one of their sample sales. It was $55. I looked for many other scents but they were all sold out. So I ended up with this one, figuring that I liked the notes in the description. And generally I like most of DS&Durga. And I love Coriander which I just bought. When it arrived and I opened the box I was first impressed with the massive, solid white box and the strange Celtic poem on the side: "From Ulster fort to Argyll's holy top, Red Branch nights, proud chiefs in wool, faded dyes, rowan berry, bitter rose, hunt in wood-of-wonders, melancholy thistle, for feasts, water-of-life, Caewg's amber wreath, smelted iron, wine-in-horn, now broken spear and empty hills." I don't know what any of that means. DS&Durga loves to create stories about their scents. As do all perfume makers. I mean what would Guerlain's Mitsouko be without the tale "inspired by the heroine of Claude Farrčre's novel 'La bataille', a story of an impossible love between Mitsouko, the wife of Japanese Admiral Togo, and a British officer. The story takes place in 1905, during the war between Russia and Japan." But this one is an herbal, grassy, peppery, thing. I unpacked the bottle and left the box on a shelf and it perfumes the whole little room like potpourri. It is definitely unisex, if that word still exists. It is not heavy or cloying. It is not very fruity or very amber. It is not oud, or vanilla or patchouli, all the notes that seem to be everywhere nowadays. It is odd and unique and strange and somewhat introverted, like a very shy woman who wears old sweaters and long skirts and avoids eye contact. Rose, thistle, embers, thyme, pepper. It has that touch of something smoked or burnt and that touch of seasoning which is a trademark of Cowboy Grass and Bowmakers and Burning Barbershop. It evokes wandering, finding something off the beaten path, like a doused campfire near a grassy hill.

This line is always good for something a little different. Opens very sour on my skin, hot metal and wet caves come next, two ideas that clash and dance apart before clashing again, not always with pleasant results. 10 minutes in, earth & ash come to the forefront, reminding me of campfires doused by spring rain. The sour note still lurks, weaving in & out, oddly familiar. This is very much an outdoor scent, evocative of rolling hills in the damp spring. Then, 30 minutes in, there is a thankfully brief period where the sour comes to the forefront enough for me to recognise it: olives. Cocktail olives, green, oily, & bitter. Whoa. Soon it starts to war with something fizzy, something, I also recognise, & then it takes center stage for the rest of it's brief but enjoyable duration. Rose, but rose that is recognisable to anyone who's had a Lush bath bomb. It's Tisty Toasty, complete with the sodium bicarb edge. I like this; I respect it as art. Certainly, I would recommend a sample as a palette cleanser. But I imagine it would take a rare individual to enjoy all it's facets (damp cave & fizzy rose? An odd pair to be sure.) Most impressive is that it has so many clear stages as it morphs towards its final destination. They hit the mark of a scent that tells a story, which is at least worth a sniff or ten.

This opens with an evocative blast of stagnant air, like the basement of a blacksmith. Theres a slight metallic edge, and a mildly mineralic, dirty component that conjures images of the dampest, darkest, dirtiest spider web infested corners of the world. It's monolithic, and I totally love it. The overall musty, room-like effect is what really makes it interesting to me, It gives it a contemporary yet-medieval air. A sweet, greenish rose note begins to show itself shortly after application and it grows and grows. Eventually, the smoke burns away and leaves a dirty rose, with a savory peppery spiciness that I get tired of way too quickly. It's sort of thin and sharp to my nose and by the end of the day I am itching to scrub. In short, I suppose I love the broken spear, but the bitter rose could use some tuning. All in all worth a sniff, but only the opening is for me. 6/10

holy crap. the opening is straight up burning thyme. Like someone is sitting by a fire that is long out with some smoldering thyme. The rose, thistle, and larch adds a green damp quality as well. It reminds me of a medieval city at night. Iron forges out for the night, its cold dampness setting in. You can smell the damp moss growing where the sun doesn't shine. I do not know if this is wearable for everyday unless you work at a Renaissance faire. If you do work at a Renaissance faire then you need this. Or if you have a small log cabin house. Keep this fragrance there and wear it after you started a fire. The name pretty much says it all: Bitter Rose and Broken Spear. Accurate. This is a very unique fragrance, although maybe a little unwearable. Older like 40+ and definitely leans masculine.

This is dark and dirty. Burnt wood and cold metal, damp stone, lots of smoke and undergrowth. I love this out of the bottle and on other people, but on me something sadly goes sour in the drydown and I begin to smell more like an old boot than, like, the mountain witch warrior I expected out of the bottle. While they don't smell similar, if you're a fan of Andrea Maack's Coven this has a similar feel (and also sadly doesn't work on me despite my really liking it.) Silage was huge on me, longevity about 4 hrs, completely gone within 8.

An interesting masculine aromatic scent with woody and floral undertones, this is quite an evocative composition. The perfume opens with notes of thyme, ashy embers and tailed pepper. The heart encompasses rose, thyme and nutmeg. The perfume settles into an ashy amber with notes of amber, larch and slight iron. The perfume leans masculine, is moderate in sillage, projection and longevity. Takes you to some ancient battlefield now desolate and overgrown with plants, herbs and trees. Enjoy!

Let me start by saying I am not one to dwell on the negative, or to slam something, just because I can. More often that not I would rather just let things go vs say something negative, After all, what does being negative buy us? But for this one I have to say what I really think. For me this one is a big No... Just NO. This one should be renamed to.. Grandma's coming, run and hide.. In the initial spray of this I get freezer burned roses. Like someone put roses in a freezer bag, didn't fully close the bag, placed it in a deep freeze and pulled it out several months later. After it mellows for a bit the freezer burn starts to subside and a very feminine old lady smell comes out. My dearly departed grandmother would have loved this scent, me.. not so much. Other reviewers have mentioned that they have grown to like this one after several wearings, but I cannot honestly say that I don't want to wear this one again.., EVER. I also do not see how this one can, even the slightest bit, be labeled as a unisex scent. Bottom line: If you enjoy the old lady smell, or are OK with hanging in there in case you grow to like a scent, then give this one a try. but for me.. NO.. Just NO!

DS & Durga Bitter Rose, Broken Spear est certainement unique, mais juste pas bon à mon avis. Oui, vous pouvez sentir de fumée et de fer et peut-être un peu de sang, mais il est difficile à porter et très fort...donc, il est un problème si vous regrettez votre décision.

I can admit: I hate this scent. Don't buy it blindly.

9:00 - Smoke and pepper with thyme. Hint of rose and amber. I'm going to go wander through the office and see if I horrify anyone. Will report back. 9:50 - I finally just told my coworker to smell me (standing a foot away and subtly waving my arms around wasn't working) and got back "barely discernible" but history has shown that her nose is broken so don't take that to heart. It has died down a fair amount but still easily sensed. Turning surprisingly femme for something that has a note of burning meat in the first few seconds of application but I would still class this as unisex. It's starting to get that soapy smell that I've noticed with about half of the D.s. and Durga perfumes I've tried. That worries me. So far, this is one of my favorites from the line and the soapy bit tends to overwhelm the rest of the scents. My absolute favorite perfume I own is the limited edition Bruja de la Rosa from D.s. and Durga, so I have a lot of faith in what this brand can pull off. 11 - Settled into a slightly soapy rose and unsweet amber (if I stick my nose to my wrist) with a smoky hint (if I let things float around as they will) and I'm into it. It's one of those I'd find fascinating if I was in a group and couldn't figure out who was wearing it. 1:30 - Sitting here, watching Hulu while moving things around on spreadsheets, and I keep smelling something sweet and wonderful. Things switched up and my wrists smell smokey, but so long as I don't try to smell anything directly, I'm sitting in a cloud of dessert. It isn't straight vanilla, which is good because ugh, but more a candied flower and caramel smell, but nowhere near as strong as that sounds. I'm going to give this a second go-round, but it might go on my actually-might-spend-money-on-this list.

This is very inky, smoky, dark. Embers? Most definitely, like someone threw something they shouldn't have into the fire and the chemicals burning off are in the air, in a very realistic way. In a forest. This fire is happening surrounded by pine trees and a very peppery smoky freshly cut then burned wooden scent. It's hard to distinguish any rose here, but I think it's contributing a lot to the inkiness I associated with very concentrated rose extracts. As Barrister said, it's a bit too bizarre to be wearable but, I'd wear it for myself around the house when I was craving a night by the fire out in the woods maybe. It does have a distinctly chemical (which I'm calling inky here) edge that may be quite offputting to others who aren't so fascinated by trying to figure out what they're smelling :P

BRBS starts out with a familiar Durga medicinal/varnish-y woods thing (e.g. Bowmakers, Freetrapper) but this is very quickly balanced by wafts of warming rose and an almost honey-like note (which might be the listed thistle?). The impression is of shafts of sunlight dancing through moody grey overcast. I had been on the fence about buying one of the aforementioned "woodshop" variants, and I'm really glad I waited to blind buy a bottle of this discontinued stuff instead. It suits me much better; lafindesiecle described it as having some sort of spiritual similarity with Andrea Maack's Coven, despite being totally different, and as someone who counts that one among their favorites, this is 100% correct.

Of all the Durgas I have tried so far Foxglove, Spirit of the Glen, Isle Ryder, Bitter Rose Broken Spear, Pale Grey Mountain This is probably the one I like the most. It has character. and gets rated above pleasant. I normally hate rose but this is done very well. If you think this is dark, by god, you need to try Bois d'Ascese. This is light grey in comparison. Like all the Durgas I have tried so far, longevity and sillage are on the lowish side. This is most definitely not bizarre. It has character and is quite wearable

I've never smelled any fragrance like Bitter Rose, Broken Spear. It opens with an appalling blast of iron and metal, then pretty rapidly develops an immense rose note. Unfortunately, the marriage is a little too bizarre for this juice to actually be wearable. It's interesting as an olfactory oddity and even maybe as art, but the overall impression is one of "blood and flowers," which would likely offend anyone in close proximity. Perhaps pick up a sample if you're a collector, but otherwise, pass.

Oh my Lord, this is DARK. This is innocent rose beauty put into iron shackles in the cold, moldy basement. Someone who's very much into goth could probably pull it off for everyday use, but it does, as previously mentioned, embody deep and elegant sorrow. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust even the most fragrant rose will turn. An amazing composition.

Gardoni-like composition of smoke, rose, bitter herbs, woods, and resins—but lacks complexity in the longer term. 7/10 This has been another edition of "LittleDinkums Reductive Reviews."

This opened sharply medicinal to my nose, like camphor. My hubs actually liked it. After a while,MIT developes into a very vegetal rose, a bit like FM Portrait of a Lady but edgier.

burnheavy thicksand. underbooze-ings. rose wobbles. ambered eons.