IN SEARCH OF A DECENT CONTEMPORARY ROSE……OCTAVIAN by ELECTIMUSS (2020) + LA FILLE DE BERLIN (2013) + LA FILLE TOUR DE FER by SERGE LUTENS (2024) + FORBIDDEN ROSE by LANCOME (2025) + ROSE EXPOSED by TOM FORD (2025)

Sometimes I have rose cravings. And those cravings are not satisfied by the spicy rose chypres of the 80’s nor by the powdery Guerlains that are replete in my collection – Nahéma is very beautiful but it suits a very particular fragile and vulnerable state with its peachy talcum and that is not what I am thinking of right now.

There are a hundred million prissy artificial rose perfumes out there in the mid-price ranges of department stores that sicken me: the contemporary rose tends to induce a lurch in the stomach. Certain chemicals – I don’t know what they are – pins in the head that I imagine are supposed a represent a ‘contemporary virginality and chaste put-togetherness ‘ – are supremely offputting to me – although I realize I am not the intended candidate in the first place, nor the mouthbreathing pursuants of such insipid individals.

There are an equal number of rose ouds around. I like some of them, but it depends on the oud; the quality, the naturalness, the ratio of the formula. So many have that note in the base, that inescapable black vinous cypriol – or ‘nagarmotha’ if you want it to sound more exotic – that even if you paid me I could never wear them.

But I don’t mind a bit of oud in a scent every once in a while. Particularly if it is the gentler, richer, barnyardy kind (as in Cartier’s lovely Oud & Pink, which you can read about here, along with L’Heure Osée and Pure Rose – one of the better rose trio variegations of recent times) There is also some oud, in the base accord of Dusita La Douceur De Siam, the modern rose I wear the most but which I cannot rely on exclusively. There is certainly too much oud in Electimuss Octavian, a classic saffron heavy Arabia-ish ‘oriental’ I have a strange affiliation with, and I do sometimes suffer a little in the later stages as a result of this if it is not the right day for that muddier plasticene, but the opening of Octavian is sublime: a really high quality rose oil with pink pepper and what smells like raspberries – it is a very haunting accord, and – drat! – I have almost got through my samples now. I enjoy wearing this when I want to feel anchored and a bit heavier in the bones :it has got past my defences, It is also very expensive at 500 dollars, and comes in the most unattractive bottle; my visual brain cannot handle the Trumpian eagle insignia set against that light copper topper – and I would have to hide it away out of sight even if I were lucky enough to obtain it: not the ideal reaction when you shelve out for a luxury product….surely you want the whole package, not to shame it away like Jayne Eyre’s lover’s aunt in the dusting attic?

A nice rose I have in my collection, but which I had forgotten about until just now – a travel sized bottle from a Collection Noire gift set I received once during my brief stint at Vogue Japan – is Serge Lutens’ La Fille De Berlin.

Why have I failed to wear – or write about – this more? It is jammy, syrupy; rich red rosey, soft with geranium and palmarosa, and it works. It caresses. The base of Fille De Berlin is a warm, musky honey and patchouli, but subtly done. The red tint of the perfume is also gorgeous ; hue-tastic. I am wearing it now. And I like it. But why…….. does it ultimately bore me? (it always did, from the first time I smelled it in Shinjuku Isetan, overly excited.). It’s just…… so….nice. Which sometimes I want. A wrist of nicety with a slightly traditionalist edge.; a cosey rose. But somehow, La Fille De Berlin is just a little too fuzzy and drab about the edges, lacking any bite (and I think it has too much Body Shoppish White Musk, ultimately) even if I may still wear it when I go out for lunch with a friend on Sunday in Motomachi, the chichier part of Yokohama where a waft of such an odour will not go amiss. Perhaps with an added touch of Rose Trocadero by Le Jardin Retrouvé on top? This rose goes perhaps too much the other way; an acidulousness of rose morning fresh-hood that almost strains credulity with its photo realistic I AM A ROSE!! desperation, but which still makes for quite a pleasant rose spritz. It makes me want to own again a bottle of the original Annick Goutal Rose Absolue, which was more genuinely heavenly dewy. (You can read about Rose Trocadero here, along with reviews of Mona D’Orio’s Rose étoile D’Hollande and Ormonde Jayne’s Rose Taif Elixir if you want to continue to rose up your day now that the Halloween pumpkins have been put aside).

Tom Ford has a few roses up his tight-muscled sleeves: I quite like Cafe Rose and Rose Prick is alright, but like so many of this house’s releases with their ‘shocking’ names, the juice inside the bouteille often does not match the lascivious projection of the fragrance’s title. ‘Rose Exposed’ is another such item : perfectly fine, a peppery rose oil and rose water opening that was moderately exciting, but ceding quickly to a leatherish /oudish / cashmeran base that belies a fundamental lack of concerted creativity and immediately dulls the senses. What is being exposed here exactly? The project manager’s cowardice?

This is the thing with Names With Claims: Lancôme’s new Forbidden Rose also does not really live up to its name – if you are going to call something that at least give it even a minimal shock of the new- but it is a pleasingly fruity rich rose / fig / amber and earthy patchouli that took me nearly back to my beloved L’ Artisan Parfumeur Voleur De Roses – which wasn’t even called ‘niche ‘perfume when I wore it back in the early nineties – and was my favourite of the large rose selection the house now has at department stores available for your gullible, rosaceous delectation (Rose On The Moon; Hot As Rose; Hell Of A Rose; Not Your Rose; Storm And Roses; I Flamed A Rose (what?); most of these are worth a sniff if you are in the market for a new fresh rose, although Rose Or Die, my second preferred of the roses from this overpriced collection, is a green tea rose and doesn’t quite merit its melodramatic name; suggesting nothing about the kind of passion that would require any form of killing, or throwing yourself from the trellis onto the spiky white garden fence with a pair of rose shears protruding from your gullet because your hybrids for 2025 hadn’t quite bloomed as you’d been hoping).

Of course, despite the vague disappointment we all experience when a fragrance doesn’t live up to its hype, I am not averse to a touch of melodrama, as anyone who reads the Black Narcissus will attest. And I almost miss the verbal garbage , the lavish verbiage – that used to come with each new Serge Lutens release, when pretentious-beyond-endurance mystical ‘poetry’ was given instead of detailed note listings and you had no idea what the hell he was trying to say (though you liked the underlying suggestivity of this rubbish anyway because you were a perfume freak and were lured into bullshit about phoenixes rising from the ashes and the like). As a result, the current releases, both in descriptors and in execution, do seem rather tame in comparison with the past, when the perfumes were so much more potent (can anyone forget how tart and full bodied, green and acidic the original formula of Sa Majesté La Rose was? It was so bitter and twisted! A startling entry into the perfume market at that period of time unlike anything I had ever smelled before or since, and it is a shame it has become the wan attenuation it once was (you can read my original review of that perfume here in an old article, ‘Some Roses For Winter’, which features some other all time rose classics and personal favourites, such as Caron Rose, Creed’s Fleurs De Bulgarie, Maison Parfumeur et Gantier Rose Opulente, Sisley Soir De Lune; – in fact, if you type in ‘rose’ at the top of this page in the enquiry space it is surprising how many reviews of rose perfumes do come up that I have written over the years. Do I really like the scent of this flower this much? I think I probably do… ).

But I was supposed to be discussing the contemporary rose. And although other reviewers describe La Fille De Tour De Fer (‘the girl in the iron tower’? hardly) as a tad dull and inferior – simplistic – to the Lutensian rose precursors, I happen to personally disagree: this was the only perfume I smelled the other day at Yokohama Takashimaya that I thought, ooh — maybe, maybe I can get this as a birthday or Christmas present or sneak myself a treat on pay day – the 50ml was not too extravagantly priced and I felt that want want want feeling that I haven’t had for quite a long time with a recentish perfume. What I don’t like about it, just to nickpick – is the colour – why not that deep bloody red of La Fille De Berlin, which would make the perfume so much more irresistible (even drinkable) ? Why this pale tedious lavender purple more suited to a bathroom cleaner when the main ingredients, very prominent, and very lovely, are the immediately recognizable essences of Bulgarian and Turkish roses that both stimulate and mollify the heart? I love the natural oils that perfumer Christopher Sheldrake has chosen for this scent, but it seems odd to have coloured them in this way. Was this tint chosen to represent the iris at the centre, or the metallic edge that is said to come later in the dry down? I don’t know. But though I do get a strange kind of anti-synaesthesia from the colour/smell amalgam, I want this in any case. A rose dab, simple, fresh, deep, real – voluptuous- can sometimes be exactly what the doctor ordered.