Seminalis (by Alessandro Gualtieri for Orto Parisi, 2016)

When Alessandro Gualtieri launches something new, this generally creates a stir. And in fact about Seminalis, the new fragrance composed under the brand Orto Parisi, I already heard everything and everything's opposite well before I could put my nostrils on it. I was prepared for something strange, controversial, even to the limit of brutal, but ...

But I was caressed, instead! 

Cuddled, comforted, literally seduced by the scent of freshly baked butter cookies, sun-caressed skin, warm vanilla milk.

This Seminalis is a true frun frun scent (... please, do get me right, frun frun is the sound of a cat purring). Typically, when I perceive the warm butter cookies it is because the fragrance contains natural sandalwood, and in this case I could swear it is. Then I also smell natural vanilla, cocoa, ambrette seed, patchouli, perhaps Florentine iris. And some white chalky and dusty musks strengthening iris and ambrette. If I'm right, this is one of the most expensive formulas I've smelled this year.

Yet, in spite of vanilla, cocoa and cookies, Seminalis is not a sweet or gourmand scent at all; indeed, the feeling that dominate is dry, woody, dusty, twilight; maybe it's due to a rough woody and slightly metallic oud-type note which Alessandro often uses, and that perfectly balances any tenderness, adding that "Virile" (manly), "Duro" (hard), "Brutus" (brutal) stimulus which clearly defines Alessandro's idea of standardized virility (these are scents in the Orto Parisi line. I wrote about them here and  here)

Those who are familiar with his previous work "Boccanera” (blackmouth) will recognize the same crepuscular atmosphere, dry and powdery, but here the theme is fully developed.

This Orto Parisi line is winning me over at any new launch, each fragrance out so far being convincing and fun to wear, which is not something that happens often.

Then we can discuss until morning comes, why one is called "Stercus" (manure), another "Seminalis" or "Brutus", about the sexual provocation and everything else. But as we speak,

I try to understand what my skin says.

And the skin tells me that this Seminalis has a different mood from Alessandro's previous works: I feel it more intimate, private. Eventually, semen is a gift men offer to their partners and this perfume, bearing this name, smells just like a gift.

ps

Maybe we girls are all too accustomed to the "Duro", "Brutus" family, and all their testosterone-packed army of friends. Nice to date, intriguing, and even exciting for a while. But in the long term, extremely tiring. Some days the only thing we girls want is something that makes us frun frun...