Created by : François Demachy
Date : 2014
Genre : Confused rose
Concentration : eau de parfum
I defy anyone to put this rose-centric perfume on a scent strip and then NOT put it on their skin! I thought the opening was gorgeous when I tried it out and immediately sprayed it on my wrist hoping that it would make a boring Sunday exciting as the perfume evolved over time. Well… it evolved but not in the direction I like.
I find that rose scents are great when they are simple like Jo Malone’s Red Roses Cologne or all wrapped up in a complex chypre structure as in Estée Lauder’s Knowing or one of my all-time favourites, Coriandre by Jean Couturier. Unfortunately, Rose Nobile is a wishy-washy rose scent… not simple enough for the purist in me nor complex enough for the connoisseur. The opening was gorgeous… a kind of citrus rose with a clarity that pulled me in… but then it veered off into a non-descript floral with lots of powder clouding over the already blurred bouquet of notes. On my skin, the drydown ended back in the rose territory but with a distinct sour note, which I didn’t like.
Acqua di Parma has some very beautiful perfumes, Magnolia Nobile comes to mind, but this one left me looking forward to washing it off. The following day I tried it again but no, it didn’t appeal the second time around either. I definitely recommend you try this one before buying. Although the first few notes are spectacular, you might not like the bitter heart.
P.S. This idea came to me a few hours after I posted this entry. If you are looking for a powdery, rose-centric perfume with iris and without the sour note drydown, try the original Paris by Yves Saint-Laurent. My bottle is about 10 years old and it is still wonderful. It’s a bit big but that’s a question of dosage. One spritz is enough.
The Perfume Chronicles 
Brigitte
/ May 21, 2019Confused rose…..love that!
I had all but forgotten about Coriandre…. it’s been decades since I sniffed it. It was the signature scent of one of my friends and for that reason alone I never wore it.
Normand Cardella
/ May 21, 2019Oh yes… other people’s signature scents are totally off limits! Eeeesh!
Normand
Tara C
/ May 21, 2019I didn’t much care for the Rosa Nobile either, Iris and Magnolia are much better. Can’t wait to sniff the new Hiram Green Lustre rose scent, Etiket should have it soon.
Normand Cardella
/ May 21, 2019Yes! I tried Magnolia Nobile just once and I remember loving it. Will have go to back and try again.
Lustre rose? Sounds interesting.
Thanks for writing.
Undina
/ June 23, 2019Aqua di Parma is one of the brands that never got any love from me. I suspect the brand or their perfumes do not have much to do with my attitude towards them, but since it’s not one of those brands that are “compulsory sniffing” from the education standpoint, I decided not to fight myself. I tried rose, iris, magnolia, peony and some citrus-centric one – and none of them caught my attention. So I stopped even checking if they released anything new.
“Confused rose” is a good one.
Normand Cardella
/ June 23, 2019I know! I mean, I want to love them. They have beautiful bottles and the combination of notes sounds good… but the price is just slightly out of my range and why pay those prices when there are other comparable scents around. The only one I own is Colonia and I tried to give it away recently and… no takers! Colonia is based on neroli and it is my least favourite note, or almost.
I’m going to test their citrus-centric perfumes (the blue bottles). Maybe there is something in that line worth buying.
Thanks for writing!
Normand
Brigitte
/ June 28, 2019Oh I forgot about those blue bottles! There’s a fig one I would be interested in trying.
Normand Cardella
/ June 28, 2019Definitely try it before you buy it. I loved the Fico d’Amalfi so much that I bought it after 10 minutes on my skin. Mistake. It only lasts about an hour and it left me with a highly chemical scent with only a trace of the lovely fig note that initially seduced me. Not expensive, though. 😉