Nobile 1942
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The first spray delivers a jammy wallop of wine-dark fruit—prunes, raisins, perhaps a whisper of candied fig—cut through with bergamot's sharp citric brightness and an almost vinegar-like fermented edge. There's already smoke curling at the periphery, and the clove announces itself with its characteristic numbing sweetness, suggesting this sweetness won't be simple.
The rose and saffron bloom through the cedar like spices grinding in a mortar, the geranium adding a metallic, slightly bitter greenness that prevents the composition from tipping into cloying territory. The leather begins to assert itself here, not the clean suede variety but something more worked-in and resinous, marriage of the frankincense's cool smoke with the spice basket creating an almost Byzantine richness.
What remains is a skin-close murmur of vetiver's earthy rasp, patchouli's dark chocolate depth, and that persistent everlasting flower lending its strange burnt-caramel sweetness. The leather softens into musks that smell faintly of old books and beeswax, whilst the frankincense continues its quiet, meditative smoulder—less fruit, more contemplation.
Rudis is a study in controlled opulence, where Antonio Alessandria takes the hedonistic warmth of wine-soaked dried fruits and crashes it headlong into leather tanned with frankincense smoke. The opening feels like stumbling into a medieval apothecary where someone's been macerating figs and dates in fortified wine alongside bergamot peel—there's a sticky, slightly fermented sweetness that immediately telegraphs 'fruity' but with an aged, vinous depth that keeps it from skating into gourmand territory. As the rose and saffron emerge through the cedarwood and clove, you get this fascinating tension between the perfume's baroque, spiced-fruit extravagance and its leathery, ascetic backbone. The rose here isn't fresh-cut or dewy; it's the dusty crimson of dried petals pressed between pages, registering as much through the geranium's metallic-green rasp as through any traditional rosy softness. What makes Rudis compelling is how that everlasting flower—with its maple-syrup curl of smoke—threads through the patchouli and vetiver to create a base that feels simultaneously churchy and louche, like a Trappist monk who's developed a taste for Amarone. This is for the person who finds most fruity fragrances too bright and most leathers too severe, who wants their opulence tempered with something a bit penitent. Winter evenings, velvet jackets, wine cellars converted into private libraries.
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4.0/5 (147)