Laboratorio Olfattivo
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The saffron and nutmeg strike first with an almost culinary bite, immediately joined by gaiac wood's burnt tobacco undertones and labdanum's amber-sweetness. Within moments, clove adds a peppery snap, creating an opening that feels more incense-laden temple than perfume counter.
The floral heart emerges cautiously, with rose and geranium providing structure rather than romance, whilst ylang ylang adds a creamy indolic richness that borders on animalic. Here, the leather and castoreum fully reveal themselves, creating a skin-like quality where florals and animalic notes exist in deliberate tension, the woody base already pressing upward through everything.
What remains is a leathered, resinous skin scent—oud, cedarwood, and sandalwood blend seamlessly with patchouli, vetiver, and nagarmotha into something simultaneously warm and austere. The fragrance becomes increasingly intimate, a whisper of benzoin and elemi resin clinging close to the skin, distinctly woody and deliberately unglamorous.
Nerosa announces itself as a paradox: a floral composition that refuses sentimentality, instead channelling something altogether more austere and intoxicating. The saffron-spiked opening immediately establishes a spiced, almost savoury character that positions this unisex fragrance firmly in the realm of skin scents rather than pretty florals. What David Maruitte has crafted here is a rose that's been shadowed by leather and dark woods—the rose and geranium emerge not as romantic declarations but as sophisticated counterpoints to a pervasive animalic underbelly.
The genius lies in how gaiac wood and labdanum anchor the top notes with an immediate smokiness that prevents any floral sweetness from taking hold. By the time the ylang ylang arrives in the heart, it's already been colonised by the fragrance's darker impulses. The woody accord (88%) dominates throughout, with oud, cedarwood, and sandalwood creating a dense, resinous backdrop upon which the leather and castoreum settle like a second skin.
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4.3/5 (120)