Hello you lovely Olfactoria’s Travelers,

Portia from Australian Perfume Junkies and Perfume Posse here, with a fragrance I have written about before elsewhere. Since then I have had considerable time to wear quite often and fall madly in love with this beautiful, stark, scintillating scent.

Strange Invisible Perfumes Black Rosette was created by Alexandra Balahoutis in 2005.

Photo Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Rose, black tea, spearmint and leather.

The first whiff out of the bottle is acrid, bitter black tea and leather that smells like newly bound books with the surprisingly mentholated waft of spearmint cutting across with a fresh and disarming intensity. The only word I can think of to describe Black Rosette’s opening is outrageous. So far from anything else I’ve ever had the pleasure to get my sniff on. It’s hard to believe that something so screamingly other can be natural.

I’m sure that this opening would be a challenge if you didn’t instantly and irrevocable fall in love with it, as I did. Black Rosette is a bit like the Philippe Starck juicer, it looks weird and alien, clean lines and cold metal, completely new and revolutionary design but so perfect that it feels as if it should always have been, that maybe the idea had to become physical reality. That is how Black Rosette feels to me.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

After some time the fabulous freakiness subsides and a peppery rose blooms through the rest, still with scent images of cool metal and hard lines, the softening is minimal at the hearts first blush but the rose gingerly moves to the forefront, as if it knows it is an intruder and needs to quietly take centre stage. A dark, spicy, tea infused rose both cool and beautiful. It may be my skin but I also get an amber undertone towards the end, maybe it’s the leather, but I get a lovely resinous warmth that moves through: as if you’ve been sitting on a cold spring morning beach awaiting the sun and when it finally comes up you are suddenly warmed right through by it’s golden rays. Then fade to gone.

Photo Stolen Strange Invisible Perfumes

Quite good longevity for a natural, I can still smell something mildly amber and minty well into hour 5. Not big, once the initial fireworks are over Black Rosette is close to your skin but still with the ability to modify the air as you pass a little, and being so unusual it does stand out. It looks like there are new bottles since last year too, they look much more in keeping with the cost of a bottle, which is high. You might like to try their sample minibar though.

Further reading: SmellyBlog and EauMG
Strange Invisible Perfumes has $385/50ml + $5/.6ml samples
Surrender To Chance has samples starting at $6/ml

Have you tried this scary-licious black rose? Is there a favourite rose in your fragrance wardrobe?

Portia xx