Rose fragrances are a dime a dozen in perfumery. Almost every great perfumer has made an attempt at a rose fragrance. In fact you could say what sets a great perfumer apart is their ability to coax something new from such a well-traveled road. As a reviewer I get so many rose fragrances that when I am doing my initial testing it is very hard to not think, “This smells just like…” which then leads to the inevitable comparison to whatever I think it smells like and whether it is better or worse than that fragrance.

 

Then there are the very infrequent times when I get something which treads the rose garden path but finds a way to display the rose slightly differently and like the best artists within a genre add their own nuance to the oeuvre. Richard Fraysse, the in-house nose for Caron, has done that with the new Caron fountain fragrance Delire de Roses.

 

Caron themselves have certainly produced memorable rose fragrances. My favorite of the Caron roses is Or et Noir. Or et Noir was a dark take on rose as it is paired with woods and spices to plumb the depths of rose.

 

Delire de Roses is the antithesis of Or et Noir. Delire de Roses is a rose garden at high noon full of light with nary a hint of darkness. M. Fraysse evokes the entire garden milieu from the roses to the greenery surrounding them to the little pond with koi swimming inside. Imagine yourself on the bench, with the sun high above, closing your eyes and breathing deep; that is the experience of wearing Delire de Roses.

 

 

Delire de Roses starts with a very prominent rose note. According to the press release it is “blended rose petals” but whatever the blend is it has the effect of feeling like you are surrounded by different varieties of olfactory blooms. There is no one identifiable rose note, it instead feels like many of the ones I am familiar with.

 

 

 

As I spent the early time wearing Delire de Roses trying to pin down the rose there was a watery quality added in by lotus. I really like a lotus note that also displays the aquatic aspect and the lotus M. Fraysse uses here underpins the roses with that aquatic quality. Lily of the valley with its green floral character holds the heart of this. When I first wore Delire de Roses I felt like the heart was a little greener than it should be. Once I saw the note list I learned why as M. Fraysse uses an accord of “rose bush leaves”. This does exactly what you would expect deepening the green aspects of the lily of the valley and adding natural contrast to the rose. Normally a perfumer would head deeper into the woods or musks for basenotes. M. Fraysse chooses a different garden path as his basenotes are jasmine and lychee.

 

 

This is not indolic jasmine this is cleaned-up G-Rated jasmine; sweetly demure. The lychee is perhaps the most interesting note in the entire composition as it imparts a quirky quality to the final part of the development, which I really enjoyed.

Delire de Roses has outstanding longevity and above average sillage.

 

 

M. Fraysse has created a rose garden in a bottle or more accurately a Caron fountain. Sit a spell and enjoy the view.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample provided by Caron Paris.

Thanks to Caron Paris  located  in New York we have a sample of Delire de Roses to giveaway. As Delire de Roses is the new fountain fragrance for Caron; leave a comment naming your favorite  Caron fragrance or fountain fragrance. The draw will end on July 29, 2011.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor  

Art Direction: Michelyn Camen, EIC

Editor's note: Delire translated is Delirous which after smelling this fragance I am