Saffron Flour

when i got my first universal flowering samples, i really struggled to define saffron flour in a meaningful way. the others were so easy to talk about, but there's something ephemeral about saffron flour i struggled to pin down. my first impression was lightness and warmth - then nostalgia. pastry blind baking in the oven, teabags steeping in syrupy water, crushed cardamom pods and sugary vanilla milk. it's left-of-field sweetness with a gentle touch of salinity. not gourmand in the most traditional sense - not so sweet it makes your eyes water, but sweet like enriched brioche dough or vanilla orchid scented hand soap. there's a little savoury, culinary edge to it which is what makes this scent so beautiful. i've sat with my beloved decant for almost a year, and over time, the scent has evolved and developed - the rich, creamy butter note has become more prominent, and the spice notes - which delicately toe the line between sweet and savoury - have macerated into a deeper, more warm-spicy palette. and now, when i smell it, it makes my heart *ache*. it's the combination of nostalgia, cosiness, comfort, and that slight salty spicy edge... i'm in love with it, and i'm in love with myself when i wear it. saffron flour, you will always be famous !!!!!!

The name is perfect as a description of the scent. It feels classically constructed and there is maybe a hint of rose (the note list says rosewater) in the top/mid-notes, reminding me a lot of L'Artisan Parfumeur's gorgeous Safran Troublant. Nonetheless, Saffron Flour is not relying on the traditional pairing of saffron with rich rose. Instead it's an atmospheric saffron-suede, an indoors version of Heeley's Cuir Pleine Fleur (another gem) or a less Euro-chic take on Mona di Orio's Violette Fumee, i.e. done in a cosier, dustier, more smooshed-together manner. I can sort of get the cinnamon-and-sugar take as per some reviewers below, but only if I concentrate very hard - otherwise, this doesn't feel sweet-gourmand to me, and I don't get the buttery effect either. The textural adjective that comes to mind is 'mealy', as in the damp-feeling texture of cornmeal, ground almonds, ground buckwheat, or even chestnut flour (actually, in this respect it reminds me also of Kloon Keen's still less sweet, more austere 'Castana'). Doesn't last as long as I'd like it to, but that could be an issue with dabber-sample application and an incipient cold. Very human-feeling on the skin, and so wearable in this desiccated late August air.

Somehow the sum of the strange mix of notes above creates a scent that could be described as “saffron flour.” It has a golden roux or slightly burned butter aspect to it that blends with the saffron in a most singular fashion. Strange and hard to describe, but likable, wearable, and unforgettable enough that it made it onto my to-buy list before quickly joining my collection. Saffron Flour is an exceptionally unique scent and worth sampling if you're a fragrance adventurer. I’ve tried Poems One Through Twelve and Pleasure Portrait (my favorite) from the brand, and I think Universal Flowering is shaping up to be one of those houses that would have to try to make something I don’t end up liking.

i’m surprisingly adept at critiquing fragrances i dislike, but when i encounter one i dearly love, i become helpless. all i can say for now is this perfume is soooo incredibly scrumptious, It’s like cinnamon and saffron infused sugar, showered over a thick, golden slab of butter melting into warm, crunchy toast...mmm, i want to lick the air around it. i cannot wait to get my greedy little mitts on a full bottle. i’ll return (to edit) once i’ve hunted down the right words to truly convey how mad I am for this piece of art.

soft lactonic-creamy saffron wrapped in a rose-sweetened dusting of flour. perfectly captures that silky soft, powdery smooth essence of flour when you drop it into the cookie mixture or get the film of it on your fingers after eating a particularly flour-powdered treat. light and fluffy puffy and tender. dries down a little buttery, nutty, and even softer. reminds me of pink cheeks, powder dusted, and the salinity of butter cutting through sugary dough when you steal a bit from the bowl.

This reminds me of walking into a Mexican panaderia serving fresh pan dulce, arroz con leche, and of course horchata. The cinnamon rice of it all.....I looovveeee. I know exactly what kitkatya means about the flour note; not chalky, nor powdery, rather a dusty flour. Opening is spicy warm and cinnamony. Dry down is buttery and lactonic. The rose water is nowhere to be found. Not exactly a true warm gourmand, but it’s light and fluffy and subtly sweet, like pastries soaked in cold milk.

sticky saffron bread buttered & toasted with a glass of horchata wafting on the side. probably out of my four samples (purple afternoon, heliotrope milkbath, and poems one through twelve) my favorite! the only downside on me was that it was incredibly fleeting. it has this delicious melted butter note that comes out on me the most- which may sound weird that I enjoy it so much, but it's a beautiful gourmand that i would love to keep on for hours. writing this on a rainy day btw!

I think this perfume is just lovely. It’s a bakery air scent, without smelling cheap or cloying to the nose. I love lactonic fragrances, but I find that a lot of perfumers struggle balancing them with other notes. The spice of the saffron and horchata notes balance so well with the rose water. It’s a lovely, cozy, enveloping gourmand. As someone who typically dislikes rose, I thought the rose brought a perfect balance to this scent.

This is so much fun! An odd fragrance that works beautifully. It smells like wheaty, buttery, sweet condensed milk with a splash of rose water. The saffron is strong here too, slightly smoky, ambery, sweet paired with a musky woodiness. It’s like a saffron infused horchata with a creamy butter touch and floral notes. Just such a lovely combination and it dries down to a much more saffron forward buttery woodiness.

As someone unfamiliar with two of the perfume's key referents - saffron and horchata - for me Saffron Flour feels like a kind of olfactory trespass. This is someone else's childhood, someone else's nostalgia. The opening exhales with leathery astringency, like new shoes, then settles into a sweet prickle of candied florals which gradually dissipate into dust and plastic baby dolls with a buttery ambience.

A light yet powerful evocation of Indian saffron-ghee-milk -flour sweets. I wore it first on Ganesha Chaturthi and was absolutely overjoyed. The toasted ambrette seeds in the fragrance differ from the cardamom I associate with the sweets, in a beautiful way. For me wearing this frag is as satisfying, and as holiday-specific, as taking prasad. Sillage is surprisingly good, given that it goes on light.

Finally got a tester, upon spraying I hated it...sooo dissatisfied, but once it sat on my skin I couldn’t stop smiling. don’t even know how to describe it. I love saffron heavy scents and the butter peaking through as it sits is divine. smells like a cafe that doesn’t have AC in a town that doesn’t really have seasons, mixing patterns, and couches covered in plastic. I’m hypnotized

Spritzed inside my elbow to test my sample. At first the saffron was clear and unmistakeable over nutty gourmand notes. It dried down to leave me smelling like the Corolle doll I had growing up —my prettiest doll that I wasn't allowed to play rough with. Sweet and warm in a comforting, soft way. More than subtle enough to be elegant about it.

Lowkey reminiscent of the horchata buzzball for the first 20 mins... saying this as an earnest horchata drinker/ someone who semi-regularly makes horchata. Once it settles though, this is sooo lovely. Saffron, cinnamon, horchata, roses - everything I love. Cozy, warm, & gently sweet <3

creamy, lactonic, sweet delight of a scent. if rose water, powdered sugar, and doll heads had a baby this is what it would smell like. it’s what i chose to wear today while i alternate between napping and studying. super soft and femme.

St. Lucia saffron buns, but specifically the ones from Kirsten's Christmas set. Warm spicy and plasticky perfection with a tender, doughy butter-ambrette base. Edible, but abstract. (I love it sm.)

Creeeeamy, delightful, powdery. Reminds me a lot of when you go through a baking phase at like 13, smooshing Kerrygold into a bowl of flour to make scones, love it.

I NEED this perfume. The powder in it reminds me of Vanillary by Lush. People say it smells woody and sweet. It's very long lasting. Chaunniej's review is spot on.

i love this sm, pining for a full bottle! to me this scent is v reminiscent of iyoshi cola the “dreamy flavour” bc of the spices and creamy horchata accord.

I wear Saffron Flour when it’s raining, or when I feel a little bit lazy and self-indulgent. A puff of spicy-sweet flour cloud.

Wow. I have never smelled something like this. An incredibly original composition. 4/4 stars.

Clean Leather and Saffron with a mild sweetness Absolutely LOVE this ❤️🔥

You can tell they were having fun when they made this one.

Buttery sweet. I really only reach for it on rainy days.

such a sexy scent. see, sexy scents aren’t typically my thing, i don’t have much of a use for them and they tend to smell like a salon, but this changed me. only one spray needed because a little goes a long way. starting off, it’s a creamy, fresh salted butter with cinnamon sticks rolled in it & crushed dried rose. i’m a little disappointed on the rose water note, because its distinctly dried rose. but because it fades quick enough i give it a pass. i have a hard time with lactonic scents, i find them too sour or too “marshmallow” to be able to confidently call it something made with milk.. but this is certainly horchata. rice milk. but its vanilla extract instead of vanilla bean.. which is fine, i’m sure most love that smell.. i’m just really particular about my vanillas... and i don’t exactly love that part. i find the ambrette a bit out of place.. it smells soapy , i wish it was replaced by cardamom. (but the soap adds to the sex aspect so.. this is a stroke of genius? invokes the feeling of having had just left the shower.) the saffron is a STAR! shes beautiful, shes BIGGER THAN LIFE! as it dries down, the butter fades and you’re left with horchata infused with and topped with threads of saffron. its so, so, warm, this isn’t iced at all. for that reason... this is a winter & autumn scent... which is sad because it’s currently the middle of a warm summer. i don’t see any reason to wear this frequently in summer. i’d wear this in a hotel during a winter trip, but not to run errands.

let me just say this: I am the biggest horchata fan in the world. I've been drinking it ever since I was a kid, it's not only nostalgic but it's so refreshing and sweet that I am convinced it's the best beverage ever made (second to a diet coke!) very FLOUR forward, to me it almost smells like marzipan. the horchata note is yummy but it is a bit overpowered by the flour and saffron. over time, I'm glad that the horchata note gets to shine a bit more, it's like everything mixes together and you get that lightly-sweetened barely cinnamon note with milk. it is an incredibly unique scent, because I love horchata so much I think its ranked second place out of all the 13 testers I got in my discovery kit! if I had enough to splurge on more than one bottle from UF, I would get this one. I could smell this and instantly know which perfume it is, so if I ever smell it on someone I will be really satisfied to see it out and about!

My first impression was powder, and then I realized: it's flour. I don't know how she did that. It smells like the texture of flour? It's also milky; it's ice-cold and soft. Drydown has lots of horchata and it's so delicious, but not the gourmand I hoped it would be — something better, lighter, simpler and more beautiful. Wonderfully spicy. No rosewater on my skin unfortunately :,( Took a hot shower by candlelight and then put this on to go to bed and it's perfect. Would also be a perfect reach for when u feel ill in a feminine way ... reclining on your chaise to be cared for, clean and yielding control. My favorite UF frag so far. I'm finding that this house requires time; I sit with a fragrance for a while and find myself becoming addicted, even to notes I'm usually not a fan of (powders, usually). Getting particularly addicted to this one.

Ok the first second I smell horchata and then immediately after the horchata smell somehow reminds me of Home Depot or Lowe’s. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s extremely nostalgic to me. Normally I enjoy this kind of smell purely in a novelty way and not as one I’d wear, but this level of childhood nostalgia is making this one hit very different. I would buy this butmaybe not full size. The longer it sits on my skin the Home Depot smell goes more into the background and I’m definitely getting buttery amber. But with Home Depot in the background. This smell is so intriguing I can see why it’s divisive lol Edit: after it sits even longer, like at least an hour, the smell gets way less strong and it smells like horchata, no Home Depot. I do like this, and depending how I feel after a few more wears I might love it.

Middle Eastern Rococo. A baby angel saffron, equal parts sugar and spice. Powdered sugar, powdered milk, a cloud of cardamom. I’ve never smelled the pale purple petals of a saffron flower, but this is what I want to imagine it smells like. This doesn’t smell like leathery, flame-coloured saffron stamens. This is an “i’m baby” kind of spice. If I could describe it in one word it’d be ~precious~. Shares much with the ginger-milk Poems One Through Twelve, but I found Saffron Flour far sweeter and more powdery. Filed under “bakery air” scents (see also Liis’s Choux Choux). Mental Snapshot: Ornate tins of Mexican wedding cookies, lined with lace doilies. Porcelain platters of Kakh El Eid, showered in candied rose petals. tl;dr: cardamom coquette 🪽🪔

Poems One Through Twelve, Saffron Flour, and Heliotrope Milkbath are three powdery sisters. Saffron Flour is the middle child. She’s fair and airy like HM, seems to float above the realm of earthly concerns. Like POtT she enjoys baking, but she tends to be more experimental with her flavors, combining fruit, herbs, and spices to surprising ends. Her beauty is unusual like a pink-eyed white rabbit. It’s the kind you discover only after knowing her for a little while, and then you can’t look away. She’s an Aquarius and her opinions tend to come out of left field.

This feels a bit like Universal Flowering’s take on an ambrette “skin scent” - it’s soapy and powdery and lies pretty close to the skin. it’s very interesting and delicate but feels a bit too much like soap and baby powder for me. a lot of powdery old rose in this. i love saffron and rose and horchata and ambrette, but i am not the type of woman who wears this fragrance. very feminine, very soft.

at first i wasn't super keen on this one, but i just came back to it about a month later and it's definitely calmed down a bit and is a lot more appealing to my nose. the horchata note stands out to me the most, but i'm also getting a bit of rubber backing it up. this is a beautiful scent—cozy yet light—that sits close to the skin like a yummy secret :)

This reminds me of ineke jaipur chaí which i believe is discontinued so this could be a great replacement if it’s your signature. It’s a spicy fresher gourmand on me that it seems to be on others. I get the cream but it’s more spice forward on me. Like santal 33 without the pickleback

really spicy when first sprayed. calms into a lovely milky smooth, lightly sweetened ice cold horchata. dry down is like a horchata scented milky soap. I seriously can't stop wearing this at home both during the day and to bed. This is the ultimate comfort scent for sure!

it starts off very sickly, not quite nauseating but not too far off if that makes sense? anyway—after about 15 minutes it fades into this lovely, warm spicy, powdery&lactonic scent. it’s lovely but it dries off so subtlety that it’s definitely more of an intimate scent

The syrupy opening is initially extremely off-putting to me, but it mellows into a rich nutty ambrette that I associate with lactonic creaminess. A gourmand after the fashion of Hypnotic Poison. Nurturing warmth.

It starts out all strong saffron. Saffron mingles with rose water and amberette in the dry down. A little powdered. I’d say real saffron lovers only. I smell the plastic ball mentioned.

Smells just like kaju katli + coty airspun powder

Smells like a date to Clark st months ago

I just came back to this scent after a few weeks and I don't love it anymore... Now, it smells to me almost entirely of savory wet cinnamon. It's not spicy, it's not that sweet. It doesn't quite nail horchata (I can't smell any rice or milk or sugar). I want to keep liking it because of how beautiful I think the idea of rose water and horchata and saffron SOUNDS. But to me, this scent is kind of a miss. (◞‸◟;) ETA: I ended up gently washing where I sprayed this and while it didn't go away, the cinnamon note subsided and I was left with more of a clean saffron scent with a suggestion of rose and sugar. It still smells wet to me, but more like clothes on the line and less like murky stagnant water. I like this a lot better. I wonder if this scent would be nicer if it didn't have cinnamon... Or maybe my skin chemistry just amps up the cinnamon?

Softly spiced and sweet. Smelling this in the bottle, I wasn't sure initially if I would like it (it smelled a bit plasticky: saffron and rose), but on my skin it became a pillowy cinnamon scent. The horchata accord - sweet cinnamon and rice water - is for me the star of the show. Saffron is detectable but not a main player while I'm wearing it. If I search for it, I can detect the butter, but otherwise it fades behind the spices, preventing them from being too sharp. Though they don't share any notes, I feel that this scent is similar to ELdO's Noel Au Balcon, if only in the image that it evokes: that of a winter's day spent cozily sipping a spiced drink.

Can't tell if I love it or hate. Opening is gorgeous, very uplifting with the saffron and rose water notes, and slightly sensual with the laconic/buttery notes. Sadly after five minutes, I smell like a tub of the cocoa-scented vaseline. I'm not a big leather fan, and I think that if I wear this out I will smell like a brand new leather jacket that got microwaved with butter. If that's your vibe cool, but not mine. It was interesting fragrance to try out, it's uniquely nostalgic, and smells like what I Imagine the childhood of my grandpa to smell like (very vintage/retro). I was just hopping the top/middle notes would stick around longer.

I’m sad about this scent because every listed note is something I’d absolutely love but in reality this smells like play-doh on me. that sweet silkiness of saffron is almost there but just can’t carry through all the way to make an elevated scent, leaving it kind of plasticky and chewy on me.

This is one of the only fragrances I have sampled that made me gag. It gave me a cinnamon candy--red hots--vibe which I disliked at first. I gave it a few more tries but it still smells a little too buttery/synthetic for my taste. I love her "Poems 1-12" though!

very spicy but a bit too powdery and sweet for me too love it. would really like some more woodiness to balance out the sweetness or just something or idk. The spice is done very well tho and is actually palpable unlike many "spicy" scents

If I smelled this on someone, I'd just think they smelled like a plastic beach ball. I happen to like the smell so I'd be into it! I think a lot of the magic comes from reading the notes and seeing the beautiful bottle, though.

its exactly what it says it is. saffron engulfed by powder. the combination is delicate and pleasant. its so soft. as a lover of saffron, i wish there was more. for me this just becomes so powdery.

opening note is oddly synthetic, similar to rose water mixed with powdered sugar. but it dries down beautifully!

Smells very nice, I just wish I could smell the horchata a bit more. But it’s overall a pleasant fragrance

It smelt like expired horchata that’s been sitting in one of those plastic gallon containers