Roja Parfums
Roja Parfums
165 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Bright bergamot arrives with considerable verve, then immediately capitulates to a creamy floral rush where gardenia and tuberose dominate, their waxy blooms offset by sharp lily of the valley. The raspberry cuts through like a miniature knife—tart, almost jammy, preventing immediate sweetness.
The composition settles into its true character as a powdery, creamy floral baroque, with ylang ylang's buttery notes intertwining with grasse jasmine and may rose. The aniseed emerges subtly from beneath, lending an almost herbal quality to the sweetness, whilst orange blossom adds a honeyed warmth without broadening the composition's surprisingly tight focus.
Vanilla and benzoin provide the skeleton, but it's the interaction between aniseed, clove and cashmere wood that defines these final hours—a soft spiced powder that feels almost like skin rather than fragrance, with violet leaf and iris adding a subtle, slightly soapy green texture that persists delicately.
Roja Parfums 2015 is a fragrance that collapses the distance between a formal drawing room and a sunlit garden in high summer. Roja Dove has constructed something almost architectural here—a floral arrangement so densely layered it borders on maximalist, yet possessed of an unusual restraint in how those flowers interact.
The bergamot opening dissolves immediately into what reads as an almost creamy floral soup: the gardenia and tuberose provide waxy, indolic richness whilst the lily of the valley and may rose counterbalance with their greener, slightly metallic freshness. This is not a delicate florals composition. The raspberry threading through the heart notes acts as a peculiar tart anchor, preventing the creamy jasmine and ylang ylang from becoming cloying. There's something almost soapy in that interaction—not clean soapy, but rather the expensive, slightly animalic variety found in old-fashioned French milling.
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3.5/5 (104)