Tom Ford
Tom Ford
346 votes
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The three roses detonate simultaneously, bright and almost medicinal, whilst Sichuan pepper crackles across your skin like the fragrance is actively irritating your nerve endings. Within seconds, turmeric's earthy warmth complicates things, turning what could have been a simple floral into something with genuine friction and presence.
As the initial peppery assault mellows slightly, the rose notes gain definition—the Bulgarian especially becomes honeyed and soft, creating an odd dialogue with the remaining spice. Tonka begins seeping through the florals, sweetening the composition, though the patchouli keeps things from becoming cloying, maintaining a whisper of damp soil beneath all that creamy sweetness.
What persists is barely there—a skin scent now, intimate and utterly non-projecting. The rose has faded to a ghost; the spice has completely dissolved. Only the patchouli-tonka base remains, creamy, faintly earthy, almost indistinguishable from your own warmth. The fragrance whispers rather than speaks, which is perhaps appropriate given its theatrical opening.
Rose Prick is a fragrance that takes the flower you thought you knew and introduces it to a spice rack. Guillaume Flavigny has engineered something genuinely unusual here: three distinct rose facets—the heady indole richness of Turkish, the delicate sweetness of Bulgarian, and the green snap of May—layered so densely they create an almost thorny chord rather than a unified floral statement. This isn't the polite rose of classical perfumery. The Sichuan pepper arrives within minutes, not as a background detail but as a genuine irritant, creating a peppery bite that makes the roses feel contested, slightly argumentative. It's as if someone handed you a handful of garden-fresh petals and immediately dusted them with turmeric and black peppercorns.
The fragrance occupies a peculiar middle ground: undeniably luxurious in its raw materials—these aren't synthetic roses—yet deliberately abrasive in execution. It's floral without being romantic, spiced without becoming oriental, sweet without turning indulgent. The tonka bean in the base lends a creamy warmth that should balance the sharpness above, and it does, but only partially; the patchouli seems more interested in adding earthiness than smoothing things over. This is fragrance for someone with opinions about roses, not sentimentality about them. It suits the person who wears florals but resents being thought fragile. Morning application before meetings where you want to be remembered as sharp-minded. Evening wear for dates where you'd rather provoke than seduce.
Add fragrances to your collection and unlock your personalised scent DNA, note map, and shareable identity card.
3.9/5 (390)