Rossy de Palma Eau de Protection

Before I delved into the world of niche fragrance, I had eschewed all commercial perfumery. I made my own blend of essential oils of rose with geranium, vetiver, and patchouli - listed in order of most to least. It suited me well, but I had performance issues with the rose oil. While I have a fledgling wardrobe these days, I’ve still periodically looked for a blend that was very similar to the one I made. Eau de Protection is very, very close to my blend. It’s a little rosier. The rose is still wine scented and red, but it’s brighter. Rose can sometimes be too heavy, but the bergamot and ginger make this a surprisingly cheery rose. It has a good dose of geranium and patchouli, making this earthy. Earthy and cheery, like a woman with a nearly bare face wearing a pop of bright red lipstick. It’s a perfect daytime rose scent. I see it for autumn, but it could make a good spring rose, too. What type of woman wears Eau de Protection? She could be a redhead. She might consider keeping a pet fox. Or, she might be a blonde whose redheaded days are behind her with a black labrador mix because she can’t have a fox within city limits. In other words, this fragrance allows me to retain my sense of identity while still conforming to societal standards of everyday life. The note progression for me is first: rose, bergamot, ginger, pepper. This is the bright cheery rose that represents the side of me that waves to the neighbors in the morning as we leave for our respective jobs. Drydown several hours later: rose blends in with geranium and patchouli, with a dash of incense. The drydown is back to my roots, the part of me that would prefer to do my jogging in the woods after dark. I was wearing my very similar essential oil blend when I met my boyfriend four years ago. With this is mind, when I told him I was trying Eau de Protection he cut me off mid-sentence to tell me how much he liked it. This one is an obvious full bottle purchase. Update: I now have two large bottles. One sits boxed in a linen closet and one permanently stays out with the rest of my perfume wardrobe. Sometimes as I pass by, I smell something very sweet and candy-like emanating from the area. The sweetness is coming from Eau de protection, but when I pick up the bottle I smell the red rose and patchouli instead. This is another example of how EdP really is like wearing two different fragrances simultaneously, the light and the dark.

Rossy de Palma? After Secretions Magnifiques, you KNOW where my mind went...Rosy Palm! :) I had no idea that Rossy was even a real person. Now, after smelling this scent, I feel quite compelled to look her up... This begins so very smoothly, enchanting with the brightness of citrus braided with a warm juicy warmth and a subtle spiciness...and the rose peeking playfully: heavenly! This scent is like a sexy vivacious woman who just winked at you...excitement courses through you that SHE might find YOU attractive! More enchanting than real roses RdP's heart "beats" with sensuality and pure sex appeal. The alternating dryness of the carnation and the thickness of the jasmine define the roses' beauty better than one of Shakespeare's odes ever could. "The Vigin never wanders far from the whore" is quite apropos here; as this is at once soft, but charming and utterly lascivious. Not in a phony way, like young girls painted up as a child trying to look the part of a woman, but a woman who is at once innocent and naughty! A rose by any other name...should smell THIS GOOD! This is the svelte woman desired by all, with a slit up her dress almost to the hip...but she is no tramp. She has a tender loving side and exalts in making love (from the heart). This dries down earthy, smoky and so delicious. For all her girliness and feminine wiles, she has an earthy almost raw sense of humour, and very amusing but candid way of looking at life. Oriental enough to be seductive, but earthy enough to be herself...Rossy de Palma Eau de Protection is an essay in contrasts. Bold, but never brazen (unless it heightens the passion), yet shy when she needs to be. I am thoroughly and utterly impressed!! This is a feminine scent, no doubt. But, it's drydown is fine for almost anyone. I would not care what anyone thought of me wearing this...it's THAT good! Sillage: very good Longevity: great! Overall: 4.25/5 Not the biggest fan of roses, to begin with, Miss Rossy has me quite in her spell. This enchanting olfactive composition is a true delight, and if you love roses, then this is all YOU. I like them okay and it has me, quite literally, drooling... To give you an image of what kind of person this perfume would be, I imagine (upon meeting her and talking with her) something very like this: Gypsy: Ms. Rossy, do you smoke after sex? Rossy: *puffs cigarette sexily* I don't know, I never looked! ;)

Not being familiar with Rossy de Palma, the woman who inspired this fragrance, I went Googling to ascertain the nature of her celebrity. It turns out that she is a Spanish actress known for her work in the films of Pedro Almodóvar and (please forgive me, Gentle Reader) not exactly an oil painting. My ignorant opinion of Rossy de Palma aside, ELDO gets a lot of credit in my book for selecting an atypical muse as inspiration material rather than the usual teen idol or Hollywood starlet. For a company that sometimes gets a bad rap for using shock tactics as a marketing tool, Eau de Protection strikes me as a thoughtful, intelligent launch. The perfume itself was an instant love for me because it has so much in common with my beloved Epic Woman and can be had for less than half the price. Eau de Protection opens in fresh fashion much as a natural rose would with some sparkling bergamot, but rapidly transcends the true flower by incorporating a number of darker notes. Before you know it, the rose is quite poisonous, but all the more alluring for being so. Eau de Protection uses a similar strong peppery note to the one I find so appealing in Epic, but replaces the caraway with ginger, rendering Eau de Protection less pickle-like and a bit more wearable. While Eau de Protection showcases a fairly nice Bulgarian rose, Epic revolves around the headier Damascus variety. Both contain incense and patchouli; the Amouage favoring a gorgeous silver frankincense and the ELDO being heavy on the patchouli, and therein lies the rub with this perfume. Patchouli is a polarizing note, perhaps because some associate the smell with the '60s counterculture and the tumultuous events that surrounded it. My first wearing of Eau de Protection was at an outdoor event of a fairly conservative nature. In my defense, I wasn't familiar with the note pyramid and stupidly figured that Rose Frag = innocuous. Not! An offended woman who happened to be seated nearby sniffed ostentatiously while glaring at me as if I were The Whore of Babylon. In a nutshell, Eau de Protection has great, big sillage and is not the ticket for fragrance-phobic environments. Longevity is excellent. Many thanks to the rock star from South Africa who turned me on to this beauty, which is absolutely bottle-worthy.

Eau de Protection is maybe the only Etat Libre d'Orange I care for. At least the only one that gives me a reason for purchasing. I'm not yet sure. I love to smell my sample for smelling purposes. When I put some drops of this scent on my skin I find it friendly even if extravagant. It's such a different take on rose! I love well made rose-scents like Yves Rocher and Stella McCartney, so you can guess Eau de Protection is a totally different thing! I smell lots of black pepper since the beginning through the end. It's pickling together with ginger. Then come a very strange rose. I would say a scaring rose, but it's also exhilarating and not so scaring after all... If you think of rose you normally think of the smell of petals. Well, here the rose is taken as a whole plant. Imagine that you are smelling petals, stem, roots alltogether at the same time. I have no idea how they do it because I don't think there such an infusion of the real thing. It's artificial chemistry. The metallic edge is very obvious but fortunately it doesn't remind me of blood in a raw way. Incense and patchouli are there too. I don't detect the jasmin, the bergamot and the cacao. It's a fascinating fragrance, much more interesting as a work of art in itself than other Etat Libre that are just unpleasant smells. I'm not sure it's easily wearable. For sure it's not mainstreet (of course, it didn't mean to be!) but I still need to find out if it smells scary to other people at least on work situations. I don't personally find it scary, only different and original and for some reason it makes me feel fine. Maybe that's the real meaning of Eau de Protection! Rossy de Palma is a great actress and quite interesting as a woman. I also like the packaging and all the marketing behind. At least for once one of the Etat Libre d'Orange has a good reason for being so overly niche-marketed through big words and imagery.

This is a very prickly rose! Very beautiful, fresh, bright, edgy! On my skin it is quite similar to Paestum Rose (especially on the initial stage), but, whereas PR, while being spicy, is harder on the incense, Rossy de Palma is all about pepper. And it is noticeably sweeter, too. RdP opens with a big blast of fresh crimson rose petals, crisp and clean, almost soapy. Let me tell you, that's a very big and loud rose, I guess it could be almost unbearable for those who aren't quite crazy about roses. However, the second stage of the perfume isn't dominated by the rose I experienced in the opening. Later on, pepper, or rather Pepper, takes over. Well, I confess, this particular stage was difficult for me. I do appreciate spiciness, but this... I even started to sneeze! Fortunately for me, the pepper note calmed down half an hour later and the spiciness transformed into the typical ELdO's gingery note. The rose is still in the background, remaining fresh, but less sharp and prickly. Now it's rounder and has a silky touch. What I get in the base is sweet benzoin and soft incense. No cacao for me :( What I find quite strange is that I cannot pick up much patchouli from the composition. On my skin, there is only a faint hint of patchouli in the base, closer to the end of the whole experience. My personal conclusion is that 'Rossy de Palma' is one of the most beautiful rose fragrance I've came across, and certainly one of the most unusual, if not THE most unusual. It's truly unique and bewitching. I also think that for spicy/incensy rose lovers it might be a no less hit than Paestum Rose or Rose Poivree (another RdP's sister). The longevity is superb (this scent will please you all day long). The sillage is rather soft, but I'm not sure about it, since I only spray once (it's quite strong). 5 main characteristics: fresh, peppery, Bulgarian rose, ginger, unique.