Maria Candida Gentile's three roses #2: Elephant &Roses and Rrose Selavy

THIS POST ORIGINATES HERE

Elephant & Roses. The name is one of the best ever used for a scent, isn't it? The fragrance starts with a rose coupled with warm, aromatic, dry notes (costus and thyme), and an unidentified "animal accord". Alongside the Turkish rose, MCG has entered jasmin and the delicate tenderness of osmanthus flower, while vetiver and sandalwood offer the scent their elegant support. I also smell some spicy notes such as saffron and plush lather, that maybe aren't there. Ambergris soberly sews everythung together. The fragrance smells unusually dry and dusty, like parched elephant skin and, oddly enough, remains delicate in all phases. The elephant could have been placed in a glassware shop -and then he'd have smashed everything around it- and instead it was accommodated on a bed of roses, with an exotic and very interesting result. It 's a rose scent, indeed but the rose is only used as a counterpoint to the “elephant accord”. 

I don't know why it works, but it does: without the delicate, almost shy hint of rose the "elephant accord" would be closed, heavy, opaque. Instead, that rosy little note infuses lightness and delicacy to the whole elephant, and makes E&R an absolutely crazy perfume. 

It features an earthly, primitive, animal quality, together with a vaguely sophisticated one. 

I love when opposites serve each other and E&R is in fact a scent I wear with greatest pleasure.

Rrose Selavy is the simplest of the three rose scents, a rather linear fragrance, composed of a few essential notes you can smell from start to finish. At the beginning the rose note is almost hidden by a hint of mint that gives the fragrance an unusually fresh, green, pungent direction, vaguely damp, that strangely increases instead of decreasing as minutes pass by. 

Mint then binds rose and an elegant carnation almost turning the whole thing into a fougère. The base notes stay minty and green for a long time, suggesting a dewy rose still in bud. Male? Female? Who cares? Marcel Duchamp's creative spirit -of which Rrose Selavy was the feminine double- would've made fun of any kind of gender label! 

I'd suggest you try it especially:

- if you're not particularly fond of rose, 

- if you're a man,

-if your idea of freshness doesn't necessarily involve citrus notes.

Perhaps this different interpretation might change your mind.