'Really rosy yet cosy' perfumes: a 'hybrid' rose scent challenge

Mondo (1993) ~ Source: cherryred.co.uk

So I am writing a post about rose perfumes, and it happens to be Valentine's Day. This being Bonkers, the emphasis is very much on 'happens'. Not because I am at all Bah Humbug about the event - well, leaving aside its most rampantly commercial excesses, that is - but because I am simply not that organised as a rule. Scurries to the archives to see if I have ever blogged on a Valentine's theme before...the answer seems to be twice in five years(!), so it has been a bit patchy, certainly. This post from 2013 still perfectly sums up my view of the day, while this one from 2012 (a day late, admittedly) features Kate Walsh's Boyfriend scent, which just three days later - and rather tellingly, looking back - I reported smashing on the kitchen floor.

But as I say, the Valentine's / rose theme this year is fortuitous; the trigger for this post was rather a request the other day from my friend Jessica:

"Can you recommend some rose perfumes that might suit me (personality-wise)? Roses never used to be my thing (although I did wear 'Paris' and 'Tea Rose' for a while in the early 80s), but I do seem to be drawn to rose-scented things at the moment for some reason."

Now this is interesting, for Jessica recently celebrated a milestone birthday - her diligent wearing of sunscreen down the years means you would never think it, mind - and when I passed that particular milestone I too found myself strongly attracted to rose perfumes... Make of that what you will.

Source: greenprophet.com

But while I was delighted to note Jessica's budding interest in rose perfumes, my first reaction was: 'Ooh, roses, that's a tricky one.' So I wrote straight back, mumbling some psychobabble about my friend being 'a bit of a dichotomy, personality-wise', to buy myself some time. ;) And because she had found Tauer's PHI Rose de Kandahar too full-on - she sniffed me wearing it at our last meeting - I also asked for some general steers as regards 'fuzziness vs limpidity', 'strong and ballsy versus soft', plus any thoughts on degrees of spice, which features in a lot of my own favourite rose scents.

"I think what I want is something soft and comforting without too many other notes competing with the rose. A little spiciness would be okay, eg cardamom. I want it to wear every day, for myself, rather than to make a statement."

By way of background, Jessica is a singer songwriter and front woman of Would-be-goods (a band name to which I am itching to add a definite article, which I have almost certainly done in the past by mistake!). Regular readers may recall that Would-be-goods have featured in a few of my posts, most recently this one about a gig in London last summer, where I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy my first experience of passive vaping. In person Jessica is warm and demure, with a charming gentility, while the band's music has been characterised as 'classy, elegant pop tunes with a wispy European air' and 'clever, witty and biting lyrics'. Jessica's voice meanwhile is 'a sultry measured tone that sounds both educated and sensuous'.

The Lexington gig last summer

Now I say 'demure', but Jessica is also one of the few people I know who can really rock true red lipstick, and a friend of hers reportedly said she looked 'total badass' (that word again!) when sporting it at the gig in question. So maybe I wasn't far out with my talk of dichotomies...;)

Also worthy of note is the fact that Jessica has distant Indian ancestry and would ideally love the perfume to connect in some way to India - or at least as far as the Middle East if that could possibly be contrived. And she doesn't care for a lot of patchouli, owing to unfortunate hippie associations involving a third party, over the precise specifics of whom I will draw a veil...;).

Having given the matter some thought, and sifted through the best of the 'best of' lists of rose perfumes on the Internet for inspiration, the conundrum I am wrestling with at the heart of Jessica's brief is the fact that in my experience the rose perfumes which are 'all about the rose' - or mostly, say - such as Creed Fleur de The Rose Bulgare, Lancome Mille et Une Roses, Frederic Malle's Une Rose or Serge Lutens Sa Majeste La Rose, tend not to be what you would call 'soft and comforting'. While the powdery, cosy, contemplative scents like Parfum Sacre or Lush Gorilla Imogen Rose, Ormonde Jayne Ta'if or Rose Kashmirie, NV Mohur etc are more about the softness and do not smell that glaringly of rose - or not on my skin at least. Jessica revisited her sample of Ta'if in fact, and pronounced it to be insufficiently rosy, hehe, giving us a helpful benchmark.

Source: naturalbeautyworkshop.com

I have discounted all the rose-forward Tauers as well, by analogy with PHI Une Rose de Kandahar, as they are all a similar intensity. Then FM Portrait of a Lady, By Kilian Rose Oud and Amouage Lyric have the requisite Indian / far away feel to them, but are also not overtly rosy enough to my mind. YMMV of course, as might Jessica's indeed, when she catches up with them. And I would say that most of the above perfumes have too many notes competing with the rose, though as long as the latter as very prominent, that aspect may well fall out of the equation.

Next up, I ran the question past Katie Puckrik, who came up with two suggestions: the new scent Spirituelle by Divine (which I have not yet tried) and Rose Splendide by Annick Goutal, which I smelt during my last visit to Fascination Perfumery, but by the looks of things may have muddled up with Rose Absolue in that post. It turns out that Jessica used to own and likes Rose Absolue, but again it lacks the cosy aspect.

Source: fragrantica

We are kind of back to 'spiky vs fluffy' territory, though for spiky substitute 'realistic'. And here we are of course trying to combine both facets in one, as well as incorporating Eastern influences and possibly a slight 'badass' undercurrent for good - as in bad! - measure. For even though Jessica envisages this as being more of an everyday scent, I think it would be nice if it had a hint of a sultry kick to it somehow.

My own best tips at the moment - which are cosy-ish and 'somewhat, veering to quite markedly' rosy - are Agent Provocateur Original and Tom Ford Cafe Rose. However, I could really use your help on this to generate some more contenders. Is the notion of a rose scent that is 'really rosy yet cosy' too thorny for words, hehe, or is the perfect 'hybrid strain' out there somewhere...? ;)

Oh, and this is not the sort of powdery rose look we are aiming for - that poor specimen is suffering from mildew!

Source: "Podosphaera pannosa 1" by Clemson University (Wikimedia Commons)

Finally, as we are on the theme of Asian-inspired perfumes, I was touched to receive a joky Valentine's gift this year from fellow blogger Sabine of Iridescents, who brought it back from her recent holiday in Thailand. Thanks, Sabine! My only other post today was a £1.50 Tesco coupon, which wouldn't even stretch to the smallest box of Ferrero Rocher...;)

BEX Londoner SE1 - A spicy tale of wharf-watching

I was introduced to the brand BEX Londoner in the summer of 2012 by Nick Gilbert, when he worked at Les Senteurs.  My first thought was 'Noooo, an opaque bottle!', that bane of MUA swappers and perfume lovers generally, because you can never tell how full or empty it is.  And my second thought was: 'Odd name.'  For BEX is (to my mind) a rather chavvy shorthand for Rebecca, along the same lines as Gazza is for Gary or Gascoigne, or Daz for Darrell. So, you know, an Essex girl kind of contraction is not what I would expect from a niche perfume house. Colour me snobby, but there it is.  And it is only now, in doing a bit of research about the brand for this post, that I have finally clocked that BEX is in fact the familiar name of the founder of the house, Rebecca Goswell, a brand design consultant who has worked for some notable agencies such as Design Bridge and Lewis Moberly.  For someone in the field of beauty product brand identity, BEX is perhaps a curious choice, albeit the suffix 'Londoner' detracts nicely from the first name part.  One never talks of Paul Gascoigne the footballer as 'Gazza Londoner', for example, not least because he is from Gateshead.

I read that Rebecca Goswell is a lifelong fan of London, and decided to enlist her friend, the perfumer Francois Robert, 'to capture the very essence of its most characterful and inspiring places'.  Together they set out to create a series of perfumes each named after a specific postcode, an approach to fragrance creation that brings to mind Jan Uprichard and Geza Schoen's Odourific Odyssey project in Belfast.

Butlers Wharf

I spent five summers working in London as a student, and am familiar with a number of different districts in the city. So I was eager to try these scented postcodes and see if they chimed with my own impressions of that particular area.  One scent particularly caught my imagination, namely SEI, which appealed to me on a number of levels.  The blurb on the BEX London site - note that the brand and collection itself seem to be called 'BEX Londoner', while the company is 'BEX London' - explains the background to SE1:

'Evoking the atmosphere and aroma of the old Thameside spice wharfs, Londoner SE1 is alive with bergamot, citrus, cardamom and pimento balanced with a deep woody base of amber, sea moss, driftwood and finest natural vetiver.'

Now that is a very enticing description, and of interest also for confirming the plural of 'wharf'.  Hold on, a cursory google suggests both 'wharfs' and 'wharves' are acceptable.

So how does it smell?

Well, all the BEX Londoner fragrances are positioned as 'androgynous', but this one leans to the masculine in my view, though I am drawn to it myself.  It opens with citrus, a wallop of mixed spice and a strong planky undertow, supported by the earthy facet of the vetiver.  The scent manages to be both airy yet full-on.  It completely evokes for me images of Long John Silver in Treasure Island, the sounds of creaking timbers and rocking bunks in Spanish galleons - and most crucially and nostalgically, the smell and feel of those dear little toy kegs of rum in the board game Buccaneer...

Source: vintagetoysgames.co.uk

SE1 doesn't really change and remains simultaneously bright, spicy, airy, woody and earthy(!) throughout.  It just gets softer and more blurry as it wears on.  I don't particularly detect amber, never mind the sea moss, though there is a background warmth to the scent that might well be the former. For a more nuanced description, I recommend Freddie of Smellythoughts' take on Londoner SE1 here.  What his nose reads as a 'marine accord' is possibly what I am struggling to connote with 'airy'.  I am pleased to note that SE1 was also his favourite of the bunch!

As it happens, I have a sneaking affection for wharves, and have visited a goodly number in places like Hamburg (which boasts the third biggest banana dock in the world, don't you know!) and New Bedford, MA (where I additionally took a tour of a plant that makes crushed ice for trawlers).  My interest was initially piqued by seafaring ancestors on my mother's side, including a distant great-great-something grandfather who was the captain of a clipper ship that regularly plied the waves between Australia and England.  In his spare time he kept detailed log books of his eventful voyages** and wrote and illustrated a comic strip magazine to entertain his crew during their long weeks at sea.  All of which my mum donated to the Greenwich Maritime Museum, where they may or may not still be on display today.

And thus it was that on a recent trip to London, I legged it down to the Shad Thames area by Tower Bridge to soak up the atmosphere of the SE1 postcode and generally get into the zone of the perfume it inspired. It was a blisteringly hot day and I had my luggage in tow, yet I managed to spend a happy couple of hours ambling through the rabbit warren of streets just behind the riverfront, clocking any vestigial bits of wharf I could discern, as well as the many buildings that have been named after spices and other traded commodities such as tea and wheat.

Yup, forget whales - wharf-watching is where it's at, preferably wearing SE1 for added verisimilitude, which I wasn't at the time. ;-)

And in a satisfying twist to this story, I recently did a perfume consultation for a friend who has never really worn men's aftershave of any kind.  I gave him half a dozen niche samples to try and SE1 came out as the clear winner.  The only perfume of the bunch with which he felt a 'visceral connection' (his words). And guess what...? He happens to live on a boat himself - albeit not one suited to plying the spice trade routes, but still.

**According to family lore, on one trip from Australia my ancestor spied a young boy who had got into difficulties swimming off the coast of Ceylon.  He leapt into the sea and saved the child from drowning.  Said child turned out to be an Indian prince(!), and my great-great etc was given a ruby ring by his father as a thank you for his prompt action.   I have seen the ring, but cannot confirm the rest of the story...

Disclosure: I was sent samples of all four BEX Londoner perfumes by BEX London's PR company, who also offered to send me a bottle of whichever scent proved to be my favourite (I obviously picked SE1). This offer was not contingent on my writing a review, but I wanted to do so anyway.