Nirvana Rose

I made a fragrantica account just so I could review this fragrance. I just bought a new 3.4 oz bottle for a heavily discounted price and cannot wait for it to arrive. I have an old rollerball from like 2017 that has long been used up, but I still kept it so I could huff the deliciously unique scent from time to time. I love the smell of fresh roses, but I am not a huge lover of rose perfumes because they tend to smell old ladyish or dated. This one is totally different, and I am honestly shocked that there are only 3 notes listed, because to me- the scent is so deep and complex. Deep, syrupy spiciness with a flash of rose. Yes, the opening is slightly medicinal. But not like actual medicine, menthol or cough syrup. It took me forever to figure out exactly what it reminded me of. When I was little and had a sore throat, my mom used to make me hot water with honey and lemon to drink. I would always add more honey. That last slightly thick sip of lemony honey water that is left at the bottom of the cup- warm, syrupy and super rich with the lemony honey. That is what the opening notes of this fragrance smell like to me. The depth and richness of real honey - not that cloying fake overly sweet honey note that is in so many fragrances. The note feels syrupy yet not too sweet, and ever so slightly astringent. I don't know how else to explain it. Then it is like a clean freshly cut rose, with greenery. The type of cool refreshing green floral smell you get when you walk into a high end florist shop, or when you bury your nose deep in an expensive bouquet of freshly cut roses. But really I don't think the rose is the star of this show. It is not overpowering or powdery or old lady at all. It is more there to freshen the syrupy thickness of the honey & lemon, and add some fresh floral greenery to the earthy darkness to follow. Then you start to smell the dark, warm, earthy spicyness. I still can't get over that this fragrance is only made of 3 notes. It just seems impossible to me. To my nose, it is definitely a freshly cut cedar wood with a slight hint of patchouli. And the wood is still slightly moist from being freshly cut, it's too wet to burn. Like a freshly cut piece of wood sitting outside on a dark patch of rain soaked soil on a cloudy day after a good rain. The air is still humid and everything is still damp. It never turns to a dry wood on my skin. To me, it is not overly dry at all like a lot of people are saying. In fact, I used to LOVEEEE Nirvana Black, like I could bathe in it and got so so many compliments on it, but that woody note was so overly "dry" that I used to get a headache after a few hours every time I'd wear it. This scent doesn't have that same headachy dryness. This dries down on me to a warm slightly earthy honey scent, with a touch of rose in the background. It is so so good with my chemistry. It somehow reminds me a bit of the old Shisedo Feminite Du Bois, if you added a touch of rose. That same spicy scent of freshly cut cedar. That frag also doesn't have patchouli, but it really feels like it's there in it's deep syrupy spiciness. The luscious deep ruby color of the bottle is perfectly matched to the feeling of this fragrance. It feels deep and dark and rich and syrupy (hate to keep using that word but IT FITS!) and much much more expensive than it's actual price tag. LOVE this perfume.

Ooo, lovely. So this scent seems to attract a lot of the 'ew, old lady stink' opprobrium on Sephora, which is where this retails. I understand what they intend by 'smells like old lady'...I associate that term with heavy, bitch-slap florals and the raging aldehydes, ie Chanel No 5 or Fracas, and the reason you associate it with old ladies is that the prevailing trend in perfume has admittedly moved away from those, whereas when today's old ladies were our age, that's what was in. I get that, but it's still insulting. First of all, what's wrong with old women? Lots of people never have the chance to get old. I bet they don't want to die young; they'll be happy if their daughters grow up to be old ladies. Stop asking for karma to pay you out by belittling getting old! Second, lots of women who aren't old still love 'old' fragrances. Lots of em' here on THIS site. Smart women! Okay, anyway. I loved Nirvana Rose. It DOES smell heavy and vintage. But it's an old lady who's hip as sh$&. It's a little mysterious and sultry and odd. The rose is not crisp, it still has stem and dirt on it, and it was plucked out of a dark, mossy forest bush. A man could wear this, and rose is not something that generally has 'man' written on it. You're out for a bike ride or a walk, and you turn down a street you never noticed before and at the end of the cul-de-sac is a very large Victorian house on a hill, or a house that looks a little like the Bates house. You just HAVE to go in for a closer look, so you get off your bike and climb the steps up the hill to the porch. On the porch rail is sitting a giant blue parrot wearing a vest and watch. He looks at the front door and you see it's open, so you know it's okay to go in. There's an owl sitting on the staircase rail whispering to a hedgehog and they shush up when they see you and the owl gestures you upstairs. Upstairs looks like a dank Victorian attic, dust floating in the sun shafts through the windows. There's mannequins wearing beautiful old coats and slung with pearls, stacks of old, old Louis Vuitton trunks and some old wood-and-iron school desks with portraits of Queen Victoria and similar contemporaries in ornate frames on the walls and leaning on stacks of old books with that distinctive old-library smell. Sitting at one desk is a red fox dressed like Mr Darcy, writing in a ledger, who eyeballs you for a minute then reaches into his desk, pulls out THIS bottle, and pushes it across the desk at you. You pick it up and he points to an old floor length mirror. You spray it on and when the mist settles you see in the mirror you now look like Lauren Bacall. Not old lady Lauren Bacall, young siren Lauren Bacall. Um, yes please. Look up photos, she was uber-hot and she was hot and classy till the end of her old lady days. The fox gestures for you to keep the bottle and waves you out. You leave the house and walk down the hill, and the animals watch you go. When you get to the street again, you turn around and the house looks old and empty again, and you are normal, un-sultry you again, BUT the bottle of Nirvana Rose is still in your pocket and you can be a hot 1940's bombshell again anytime you want now. That's what this smells like on me. Would totally buy this again. Go sample it and keep an open mind.

I truly do try to not review fragrances twice, but I have learned SO much about this precious perfume, I'm bursting to gush about it. If you dislike long reviews, skip it, this ain't for you. This damn perfume evokes so many incredible associations for me...it's poetry. The note list is absolutely dismissable, because there is so much happening here in great nuance. This is deeply gothic, a dry, spiced, prickly, and slightly bloody (yes, truly) rose. It's even a little musky, subtly sweaty, with the funkiness of green geranium (the geranium scent doesn't come from the blooms, it comes from the thick spongey leaves). Like a man you're attracted to on a chemical level who hasn't bathed. But, also it's *you*, and you smell beyond *pretty*, you smell like raw sexuality. It's both of you, and he's the type who makes rose oil from the hippy market his b*tch, and cares nothing for gendered stereotypes. It's you in an oversized flannel he wore over the weekend, without deodorant. Completely grunge. But the bloodiness...that's what prompted me most to re-review this. It took trying Parfums Quartana's Bloodflower to get it. Now, I can't shake it, and I'll be able to detect it in other perfumes too. Someone said "rose oxide" was the culprit for the blood accord (I'm nobody's perfumer, but I believe it). This also must contain it, because it smells oddly similar. Fear not though, because while Bloodflower is like the perfume equivalent of a horror movie (in a good way), Nirvana Rose is something more akin to The Crow - an anti-hero story with gothic overtones. Yes, violent. Yes, dark in tone. But also, deeply romantic and meaningful. A cult classic (as you can see from the reviews). I've had multiple messages inquiring of any possibility of me selling this, but it's irreplaceable to me, and I couldn't bear to. This is without a question, one of the most AWESOME perfumes I've ever smelled. It truly speaks to me. It reminds me of more than a few songs, and instead of depressing me, helps me lean into any angst, process things...keep fighting. Keep loving, even if I'm crushed. When roses get f*cked up, they release their finest fragrance. 🖤🥀

Jammy, Earthy & Dark ROSE-VETIVER... This opens with a burst of spicy & jammy rose that leans slightly MiddleEastern. It took me by surprise how jammy it is given the notes. The fruity aspects of vetiver increase the jamminess, while geranium here adds a lemon-y floral facet to the rose. As it's drying down the multi-faceted vetiver brings a darkness with earthy, woody, herbal, aromatic & fresh-spicy tones that altogether lean to cedar-patchouli to my nose. The performance is slightly above average, and better projection & sillage than I expected. I'm really enjoying this, and I really like this on its own, but for supercharged performance I like to layer over Roberto Cavalli Nero Assoluto. Overall: spicy, jammy, MiddleEastern leaning rose & vetiver scent with slightly above average performance. It's a love for me. Enjoy! Contrast to Stella Stella McCartney: These are different, but there are some similarities with a spicy rose that leans MiddleEastern. Nirvana Rose is jammier, while Stella Stella McCartney leans more to Nirvana White and has something that reads more like patchouli to my nose. Roughly equivalent performance. Update 05/23/25: Sprayed this on today. So, so good. The notes really don't do it justice imho. I get much more here than meets the eye: rose, pen ink, blueberry jam, incense, leather, geranium, pepper, powder, hint of soap, green stem, red wine, vetiver, incense, cardamom... If patchouli is in the mix, it's of the more soapy powdery variety, and I don't get any significant oud here, but the vetiver seems to have developed the rose in a similar way that oud does (I'm guessing which is why there's some oud-rose scents in the "reminds me of" section like Noir de Noir Tom Ford, Club de Nuit Intense Female, etc. although there's less truffle-leather here and more inky blueberries). It's fairly linear, but it does get a bit more leathery and less jammy as it dries down. Love it. A hidden gem.

At first, Nirvana Rose reminded me of my beloved Rose Flash, a jammy pure rose scent by Tauer. But as the Nirvana Rose developed on my skin, I noticed its darkness--not as bright, sweet-tart, and citrussy a rose as I'm used to. This smells more like a single, slightly blowsy rose that someone might carry to a ritual sacrifice in a mossy forest. I could swear I smell a little smoke, too, but maybe that's just the vetiver. To me vetiver is a complex scent, like patchouli, that I seem to enjoy only in certain combinations, at certain concentrations. I'm not sure I will wear this very often, but I got a great deal on the rollerball, which is a way I like to use fragrance (compact, less waste, more portability). I reapplied after a while, and I really get a strong cedar-shaving smell, which I like, although it's not listed; maybe my brain is confusing the vetiver and geranium combo as cedar? I'm really enjoying this. The aromatic accord is sort of mentholated, and it reminds me the tiniest bit of smoke from a menthol cigarette, only not in a gross, stale way. This is unusual and immediately distinctive; a friend put some on with the rollerball, and I could smell it from several feet away; I knew that she had applied some even though I wasn't looking in her direction at the time. I won't lie, it does give a bit of Hall's Mentholated Cough Drop, especially for the first hour or so, but I kind of like that; it contrasts bewitchingly with the tobacco and vetiver notes. I love it more and more, and it's a pity that it was discontinued. Update: I bought a backup bottle just in case, since all I had was the rollerball version. The price was low, and the flasklike or Zippo-like marcasite-looking bottle is so gorgeous to me that it seemed worth it. Great job, weird little Olsen twins!