The Different Company: Rose Poivrée

I love a quality rose scent. I never could enjoy the rose-syrup kind of rose scents like Perfumer's Workshop's Tea Rose, or the powdery and overly civety old-school kinds a la Aramis 900, or even the rose chypre heavyweights like the discontinued Gucci No.3.

I absolutely love the ethereal, thin and transparent way Rose Poivree opens. The greenish and earthy naturalness of fresh and moist roses is almost perfectly reproduced here. This is the way I love my rose soliflores. This is free of the typical perfume-y powdery-ness and cloying-ness that many rose-dominant scents seem to harbor. I also love how the rose in Rose Poivree, possesses the same waxy-woody/crayon-y texture that (another favorite) Rose 31 also has. Where Rose 31 is cumin-induced, Rose Poivree replaces cumin with a tiny bit of pepper and a complimentary dose of civet. I was always wary of rose+civet combos, having experienced and eventually turned off by Aramis 900 and the likes. But as Rose Poivree starts to dry down, I was really really impressed by how Ellena used civet to give Rose Poivree a salty-animalic complexion, while adhering to the overall slimness and thinness of the scent. Almost as if the freshly-plucked rose at the beginning started to dry up and produce the salty-dirty/dried-sweat aspect in dried rose petals. In fact, I can draw similarities to (another dirty rose fave) Muscs Koublai Khan, which is lesser rose and much more of that salty-dirty/dried-sweat civet. The rose scents that I tend to fancy usually have a thinness and clarity about them, and Rose Poivree absolutely fits my bill perfectly.

Sadly, I hear there has been a reformulation of Rose Poivree. I hear the newer formulation lacks in the civet department. This one is worth stocking up if reformulation news is to be taken seriously. It just would not be the same masterpiece without the civet.