Rosenthal

I've just added a travel spray of Rosenthal to my moderately sized collection, of which about 40% is rose-centric scents. I don't know what it is about the smell of rose that just makes me feel perfectly right in my own skin and that all is as it will be in the world. Rosenthal is a patchouli/rose with an herbal, earthy bent and hints of incense and sandalwood. I'd put it in the same darker rose category with ELDO's Rossy de Palma, Providence Perfume Company Rose Boheme, L'Artisan Voleur de Roses,, and Aroma M Nobara Cha. (I personally don't think it smells like Malle's POAL, though is a similar theme). It smells really natural without smelling like an aromatherapy blend and is also beautifully blended so there aren't too many sharp angles. It has a raisin-like sweetness which I suspect is myrrh? The rose smells deep and wild with a little of that honeyed smell of dried, burgundy rose petals. The description from the perfumer mentions hippie references, but this smells more intellectual to me. Beat poet maybe. Well worn tweed jackets with suede elbow patches, moth-eaten in places. Rosenthal. The name suits. I was testing this a few weeks ago while doing some cleaning up around my apartment and Gil Scott Heron's The Revolution Will not be Televised came on. It was a synchronous moment.

I guess i saved the best for last! This one is quite Gothic. Some urine note is added here. The incense, sandalwood, red wine, dried fruits, pepper, and roses are making a fuss. Quite interesting, specially the fruits, & red win are darkened with incense. It's like a dark sweet. It reminds me allot of "Bello Rabelo" by Les Liquides Imaginaires with that resinous red wine & dried fruit note. This fragrance mostly describes Laura Branigan's version of "Self Control" song. Each word in that song describes this fragrance. Hans, you need to visit the middle east for an inspiration, specially Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, & UAE for the Arabian culture of fragrances. Also u need to visit Morocco, Turkey for the Bazaars experience. Jordan, & North Saudi Arabia for the historical Petra. Egypt for the pyramids experiences, India for the Taj Mahal & spices experiences. East Europe for the roses naturale & specially Romania for Dracula's myth. I am quite interested to sense your next creations when you expand your imagination and visit these places mentioned above, i'm quite sure you'll be amazed of what you'll witness, & you as an artist will create a trend that every single perfumer will not follow but to admire your inventions.

Hans Hendley is going to bankrupt me because I love another creation by him, this one called Rosenthal. I read some criticism below that stated this blend has been done before, but in my opinion Rosenthal is much more interesting than Amouage Lyric and Portrait of a Lady, and I find it more wearable. I wouldn’t call myself a “biker chick” but somehow it suits my personality better. The opening is not about rose, but instead it’s a dirty angelica with some patchouli. Rose and incense comes out in the drydown...but this rose is never dominant. Damn, this is so very good. And I love that this is sold in smaller sizes. Yes, I’m going to buy my third Hendley. Someone take away my paypal.

I just got my bottle. I like it a lot. Dark rose and patchouli. It reminds me of 1980s type chypre perfumes that my wife likes to wear, but this feels more masculine to me. Boozy, woody, not sweet and floral. And a touch of some intimate female bodily scents, which makes this sort of erotic.

This is SO DEEP and DIVINE. It's far too warm for me to be testing this today, but I just know that when it's winter......this will thrive!

Hendley's Rosenthal make me initial think of rose, of course, and rose factors in prominently to the opening with iris, creating a certain sharpness to start that for me, felt like a bit of a turn off, but the dry down reveals a lot more character, an incense/sandalwood blend with the rose that almost fosters a coffee-like vibe, a grainy, earthy familiarity and comfort that takes what was sharp at the opening and brings it home very effectively. It contrasts the many rose/oud blends by the absence of the latter. The incense/sandalwood mix in Rosenthal is much smoother than the vast majority of ouds that I've smelled in concert with rose. Performance is very good, and applicability is mostly leaning to cold weather, though it's not overbearing to the point that it couldn't function in warm weather. It's fairly unisex, as well, not such a delicate or feminine rose, especially in concert with the incense and sandalwood. At $180 for 50ml, pricing is decently steep, and with a rose market already replete with contemporary entries, it may be a tough sell, but I imagine for some, Rosenthal might be just want they want out of a rose fragrance. 7 out of 10

Rosenthal is a lovely rose and incense perfume. The rose here is a dark rose akin to the kind of rose used in Noir de Noir, dark and black. Not too sweet and gourmand, however - the main other notes are incense and patchouli, giving the fragrance a forest witch vibe. Can see a woman in a dark floaty dress walking through the green woods. I definitely smell spice, too. Maybe cumin? But not too heavy, just a touch to go with the incense nicely. And I swear I get a phantom dark chocolate note...really getting Armaf Club de Nuit Intense (dupe of TF Noir de Noir) vibes from here, although I wouldn't say it's the same fragrance. It's like a mix between those and Nirvana Rose - another fresh, dark rose. I prefer other rose fragrances to this one, but this is still intriguing. Definitely a unisex rose.

It's so weird to me that I would love a rose perfume. But this is Hans Hendley we're talking about, so there's more here than meets the eye. Yes, it's rosy but this isn't your mother's (grandmother's ... great-grandmother's) rose scent. There's spice and incense and wood and pine in there too. Which sounds weird but it works. It's just so beautifully blended that the rose melts into the spice, then suddenly you're mid-forest without even noticing the transition—and then back to rose again. It's such a cool magic trick that I would admire it even if I didn't like the fragrance. It doesn't feel cliche-rose at all; in fact it seems a little subversive. Just a fascinating twist. My hat is off!

That is so pretty, all I can say! But also a bit too sweet to my liking. I'm on the fence either to keep it or get rid of the bottle, I don't really wear it at all. It's well made though, quality stuff for sure. If it was just a tiny bit less sweeeeet :( :( :(

This is pretty good. It's a deep, dark, dirty rosey/wood. It's musky and smokey, maybe leans more masculine on my skin. Great for a "bad girl" kind of vibe, biker chick, not really my thing but I can see the appeal. 6.5/10

Aromatic incensed rose that still remains fresh like we've thrown some fresh roses, leaves, and juniper to burn with the incense. Lovely! Out of the entire collection, this is the one I would buy. -

This is a red, fleshy, bloody and fermented rose. Well blended with fresh angelica, light patch, juniper, purple iris in the beginning and sandalwood and smoke in the background. The cold and metallic type with an alcoholic, juicy, amber and caramelized quality. I don't love roses and it's not a buy for me, but here it is balanced, well crafted, with a nice elegant trail, never offensive or screaming than most rose-based fragrances. Versatile, unisex tending towards masculine. Genuine and honest.

I love rose. I love Hendley. I do not love this. It is very bitter/herbal and ALL about the angelica to me. I get a little patch and a faint allusion to rose. Not a rose fragrance. I expected an incense patch rose fragrance from this. It is NOT. No sweetness at all. Very dry.

The starting is sort of interesting, a little smoky,spice kind of rose. I am not sure why, but on me this is celery+rose. I t doesn't smell bad, just not my cup of tea however.

Rosenthal is the creation of Brooklyn-based Hans Hendley, a reformed DJ turned perfumer whose acquaintance I was lucky enough to make several months ago. His line, Hendley Perfumes, contains a total of seven perfumes, all of which are formulated by him. Rosenthal was released in 2015. Rosenthal includes notes of incense, rose, iris, juniper, sandalwood, patchouli, and angelica root. Its tagline is “Flower child. Color of love. Clinging to a scheme. Rebellion within a traditional theme.” Flower child, of course, is a wink and a nod to the role of patchouli, while the “traditional theme” (I’m guessing) could be the well-known class of woody florals, and especially woody rose perfumes. Rosenthal falls within the family of woody rose perfumes. Unfortunately for me, they are almost always too boozy (who is formulating these things, anyway – Patsy and Edina?) or too syrupy-sweet. I’m not a fan of either. Rosenthal is a dry, almost-austere rose steeped in plenty of sandalwood, but maintains a youthful edge due to a noticeable infusion of patchouli. Perhaps “austere” will put some people off, or remind them of their elderly grandmother. Believe me, this isn’t your grandmother’s rose perfume. The base of Rosenthal is a dusty wisp of incense – a simple sign-off for such a lovely scent. I think the dryness here affects the longevity and sillage, pushing it down in both cases. Or perhaps it’s just my personal skin chemistry: dry, dusty fragrances just don’t have a long life on me. Rosenthal lasts for maybe three or four hours, with perhaps an hour of projection. It does, however, last for two days on clothes. (No, I wouldn’t recommend spraying this on clothes, but only because of its rich, amber color.) Being a rose scent, you might assume that this was one of the more expensive scents in the collection, but it’s actually the least. A 15 ml bottle is only $65, available on either IndieScents or from the Hendley Perfumes personal website. I have several other samples and will be posting reviews of those as I become familiar with them.

Rosenthal is an interesting challenge. It's a new perfumer's entry into a well-travelled genre. It's a big, boozy rose, in the same broad woody rose category as the rose chypres, florientals and woody florals. Artisanal perfumery brings a new perspective to the table. Small-batch extractions of materials, inventive methods and 'outside the box' approaches ignore the boundaries of mainstream technique and can lead to novel perfumes. One of the drawbacks, though, is the reinvention of the wheel. Self-taught perfumers run the risk of stumbling across compositional frameworks, that, while new to them, have been explored in detail by professionally trained perfumers. The risk becomes even greater with a genre that includes icons like like Amouge Lyric Woman, Portrait of a Lady, Aromatics Elixir and Nahéma. 'By comparison we suffer' and all. Fortunately, Rosenthal avoids the pitfalls and Hendley threads the needle nimbly. The patch/rose accord is a touchstone in perfumery. Hendley plays with it smartly and doesn't try to bend it into something unrecognizable. Instead, he touches it up with cool, woody/herbal details and extracts a broad range of shades from the accord, from dark berries to flinty metallic flashes. A bready note (iris?) matches the doughy quality of the sandalwood drydown and provides a long arc from topnotes to the milky sweet drydown. Finding inventive angles on a well-studied accord might be expected from a seasoned perfumer, but it's particularly encouraging from a new perfumer. Perhaps artistic cross-training has something to do with it. I've read that Hendley is a photographer by education and practice. He joins a growing set of artisanal perfumers who've taken their practice in other art-forms and applied it to perfumery. This hybrid-artist trend in independent perfumery is one of the most exciting developments in the field and Hendley joins Antonio Gardoni, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Bruno Fazzolari, Dannielle Sergent in bringing new ideas to perfumery through the side-door. (from scenthurdle.com)

Smoky, spicy, kooky-weird rose, so deep red it's almost black, with unapologetic punch and presence. It's deep and dark enough to please those wanting a genuinely original rose scent not quite like anything else and well off the mainstream; it's got the daring and the challenge of all Hendley scents. The extra aromatics and spice and patchouli reminded me a lot of Portrait of a Lady, but this is a remix which goes far heavier on strength and sharpness - it would absolutely kick POAL's behind in a bar fight, but you might feel more comfortable taking POAL out to a nice place for dinner than Rosenthal. Projects and lasts fiercely - in fact too fiercely for me, so that, along with the strength, makes the whole thing just a little too shrill to wear. True rose lovers will almost certainly love this though - it is CHARACTER all the way down. A barnstormer for sure, even if it's not my thing.

It’s interesting how we all perceive scent differently. Rosenthal is brilliant ice cold Rose fragrance right out the gate. Rich, syrupy sweet rose petals and patchouli dominate the opening while soft powdery tendrils of Iris infused incense gently whisk around your skin. Angelica seems to be missing to my nose and skin chemistry. All of this is backed up by an ever present Amber that slowly blooms into warm incense. I’m not sure how folks don’t perceive this scent to be sweet but this is almost candied in a way. Candied Rose, candied patchouli, candied amber etc. There is no discernible smoke or anything remotely challenging or even dark for that matter.

this was a little disappointing... blended amazingly, but, so already done. i've smelt so many that smell like this, i wouldn't quite know which scent to compare it to. it kinda feels like modern perfumers should NOT be making this. it feels like a scent you make in perfume school (if there is such a thing), as it is such a 'done' scent, it's an accord that is, well, done. it's so familiar and the mix is so expected. there's no variation on the stereotype or paradigm, it's pretty much a straight rose-patch with a bit of smoke in the background. it's done well, but it 'done'.

Got a sample of Rosenthal and it is a very easy wear. It is a fresh and slightly cold, powdery from the iris rose perfume that is sitting on top of sandalwood, patchouli, juniper wood and smoke, which creates an accord of dark wood. If you just run around, you are greeted with fresh rose, if you inhale deeper, then you get wood. Very interesting how it works. I would say no relation to POAL, not a dark perfume, nothing challenging, very unisex, easy, casual rose for a very fair price considering quality.