The Merchant Of Venice
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Frankincense dominates immediately, smoky and resinous with an almost metallic brightness that bergamot sharpens rather than softens. There's an ecclesiastical quality here, incense burning in cold stone spaces, before heliotrope's powdery almond facets begin creeping in from the edges. The clove arrives quickly, adding a spiced warmth that starts transforming the sacred into something far more sensual.
The jasmine emerges pale and slightly indolic against a backdrop of heliotrope that now reads distinctly of marzipan and Play-Doh, that peculiar powdery-sweet accord that divides people instantly. Clove intensifies, marrying the smoky frankincense to the emerging gourmand elements in a way that feels both baroque and deliberately confected. The whole composition begins settling into a spiced, ambery sweetness that hovers between incense blend and patisserie.
Cocoa, benzoin, and tonka create a triumvirate of soft, vanillic warmth that's been thoroughly infiltrated by lingering frankincense smoke. What remains is sweet but never cloying, resinous but not heavy, like chocolate truffles dusted with ground resins. The skin scent is intimate, close-wearing, a musky-sweet amber with ghostly traces of spice and smoke that clings stubbornly to fabric and hair.
Rococò plays a rather audacious trick: it opens with the solemnity of church incense, then pivots swiftly into something altogether more indulgent and pleasure-seeking. Dalia Izem has orchestrated a fragrance that smells like frankincense censers swinging through a Baroque chocolate house, the sacred meeting the profane in clouds of sweet, spiced smoke. The bergamot adds just enough citric brightness to keep the opening from becoming oppressively heavy, but this is fleeting—within minutes, the heliotrope begins its powdery seduction, mingling with clove in a way that suggests marzipan dusted with ground spices. There's a distinctive almond-like quality here, almost paste-like in its texture, that bridges the gap between the resinous top and the gourmand base with surprising elegance.
This is emphatically not a polite fragrance. The jasmine in the heart feels almost incidental, serving mainly to add a whisper of floralcy that prevents the composition from tipping entirely into pastry territory. Instead, what dominates is the interplay between smoky frankincense and the trio of cocoa, benzoin, and tonka bean—an amber-gourmand hybrid that smells simultaneously antique and utterly wearable. It's the scent of someone who appreciates theatrical beauty, who doesn't mind being noticed entering a room. Best worn when the weather turns cool and you want something enveloping without being cloying, something that nods to both Renaissance opulence and modern comfort. This is for the person who owns velvet jackets and reads by candlelight, unironically.
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