Givenchy
Givenchy
118 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The galbanum arrives first, sharp and slightly bitter-green, immediately accompanied by cardamom's warm spice and bergamot's citric brightness. Beneath these brighter elements, you catch something distinctly unusual—that decomposing leaf note, earthy and slightly oxidised, which prevents the opening from ever becoming conventionally fresh.
The rose emerges with quiet authority, soft-petalled and slightly powdered, harmonising with geranium's green-tinged florality rather than competing with it. The woody notes gradually surface, oakmoss lending an almost tobacco-like earthiness that anchors the florals and prevents them from floating away into mere prettiness.
The fragrance settles into a warm, woody embrace where sandalwood and rosewood dominate, softened by vanilla's gentle sweetness and a creamy musk that lingers close to skin. What remains is less a ghost of the opening and more a deliberate architectural statement—austere, contemplative, vaguely powdered, distinctly intellectual.
Very Irrésistible Rose Damascena arrives as a deliberately conceptual fragrance—one that resists the ornamental prettiness most florals settle for. Lorenzo Villoresi's 1983 composition treats the rose not as a romantic cliché but as a botanical object of genuine complexity. The galbanum's green-sharp bite cuts through the opening like a knife through silk, immediately establishing tension with the cardamom's spiced warmth. There's something deliberately unsettling about the inclusion of "decomposing leaf" in the top notes—a note that whispers of autumn decay, of petals past their prime, of gardens at the threshold between cultivation and wildness.
What emerges is a fragrance for those with a genuinely adventurous nose; this isn't a scent that coddles. The rose and geranium heart emerges powdery and slightly green-tinged, never swooning into sweetness. Instead, the woody base—a substantial architecture of oakmoss, sandalwood, and rosewood—transforms what could have been a delicate floral into something altogether more sophisticated and cerebral. The musk and vanilla provide sweetness, yes, but it's tempered, almost austere, as if the composition is perpetually pulling back from sentiment.
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4.1/5 (211)