Vintage Rose

I have to admit, I am fond of girlish roses, bright roses, lightly sugared roses. Vintage roses?.. perhaps, but this one seems to be all vintage and no rose. The first hour it was just dust on me. So much dust that it made me sneeze. Later I smelled a sour plum, then a sweeter plum with a little bit of rose and a lot of wood with rich non-sweet ambergris reminding me of Ambre by L'Occitane and Ambre Sultan by Serge Lutens. Neither of these fragrances is my favorite, and vintage rose falls into the same category. I can do weird things with roses -- even a rose petal jam -- but I don't like my roses left in a wooden box with a thick layer of dust on it. Please please please. Not for me.

Ever hear someone say, "I rather fond of the old gal". Well I"m fond of this. I came back to it a year later to see if my opinion changed, and nope, it didn't. This is a warm, dusty, old school rose; something you'd find when rummaging through the closet when fall came on. I see folks are giving cedar a shout out, and I have to agree. This is the note that gives it the 'heirloom' effect. I"m not a fan of this wood, and for me V. R. is saved by ooh la la labdanum and luscious plum. Yep, I like this old gal. If you try it try sparingly, but you may be surprised.

Sonoma Scent Studio VINTAGE ROSE was not at all what I was expecting: something along the lines of Jean-Charles Brosseau L'OMBRE ROSE with a light dusting of, well, dust atop the rose petals. Instead, VINTAGE ROSE has a very strong burnt wood scent, what I have been describing in my SSS reviews as “beefy burnt cedar”. Not a particularly harmonious mix, IMNSO. The dark, charred wood quality dominates the rose and doesn't complement it very well even while the rose is still stronger, in the opening. I greatly prefer ROSE MUSC to VINTAGE ROSE though I'm generally more of a vintage than a musky gal. It's just that ROSE MUSC is not very musky, and VINTAGE ROSE does not mesh with my concept of VINTAGE at all. Désolée. I should add, however, that wearing VINTAGE ROSE reminded me of a topic of great interest to me: modular perfuming, which seems to be all the rage at niche houses these days. It's simple, really. Put together a vocabulary of high-quality but simple notes, and then mix and match them in every possible permutation to produce your library of scents. That's really the only way that houses such as Keiko Mecheri, Bond no. 9, Boadicea the Victorious et al. can come up with literally dozens of perfumes in only a short period of time. This a new world, the world of twittered perfumes, not the days of lore when a perfumer could easily spend years on a single creation. Those were the days... back when perfume was perfume and nearly everything being put out today would have qualified at best as cologne or body spray. Most niche houses do not produce complex, multilayered perfumes that unfurl over time in fascinating ways, à la ARPEGE or MITSOUKO. Instead, everything is flat, as though perfumers were all taking SSRIs and just don't give a damn anymore. And perhaps they are, and perhaps they don't.

Vintage rose definitely has the burnt cedar note others have commented on in Sonoma Scents line. Personally I like it a lot as it is outdoorsy and reminds me of the high desert and wild places. When I first wore this I asked myself again and again, "What IS that pleasantly overwhelming note?" It was so familiar but wasn't listed. I went around for half a day sniffing my wrist and racking my brains for the familiar scent. Finally I realized: it's beeswax. I love beeswax. Sweet without being cloying. Not floral but with a memory of flowers. I was charmed and happy with my eureka moment. The rose and cedar are definitely there, but it's the beeswax that takes my breath away. Doesn't anyone else get that? I'm loving all the fragrances from Sonoma that I've tried, and this is my current favorite.

I really wanted to love Vintage Rose, having heard good things about it from other fans. It started out well, with a rich plummy, winey, rose... and within half an hour was sooo rich that I was nearly nauseated. Something in there does not agree with my body chemistry. I don't know what -- I generally love all the listed notes -- but I simply ran to scrub it off. You may not have the same reaction. VR is put together well; lots of natural stuff in there, and Laurie Erickson generally does a terrific job. If you like dark rose fragrances, try it. Later edit: Someone mentioned that the perfumer uses a particular sweet musk that may have caused my reaction.

I got samples of this (Vintage Rose) and of Velvet Rose oil. I LOVE Velvet Rose. I don't like the Vintage Rose. I smell that beeswax smell (kind of like super concentrated wildflower honey, to me). I don't care for it. It might smell good on men, though. I love the classic Rose + herbal + sandalwood (?) scent of Velvet Rose.