One of my most anticipated visits at Esxence 2011 was to Lorenzo Villoresi’s display .Ever since my discovery of Piper Nigrum, on a trip to New York, Lorenzo Villoresi has had an aesthetic in line with my own and I have enjoyed the great majority of his fragrances. One thing I admire about Sig. Villoresi is he does not seem to feel the pressure to produce perfumes at a consistent pace.  It had been since Alamut, in 2006, that we had a new Lorenzo Villoresi fragrance to try. Late last year there was an announcement of a new fragrance, Iperborea and I was really looking forward to trying it. It wouldn’t be until I landed in Milan for Esxence that I would have the opportunity.

 

 

Early on day one I walked over to the Lorenzo Villoresi display and I picked up the bottle of Iperborea and sprayed it on a strip and held it to my nose, and was immediately surprised. Iperborea was a full-frontal floral with no hint of any of the more familiar Lorenzo Villoresi Oriental trappings. Sig. Villoresi had done an extremely well done floral previously in Teint de Neige. There he used the bold notes of rose and surrounded it in a powdery wonderland including jasmine, ylang-ylang, and heliotrope. Iperborea is even more floral than Teint de Naige and contains a green quality which makes it an almost ideal spring fragrance.

 

Untitled, from Hyperborea, 2006 by Dan Holdsworth

 

The inspiration for Iperborea was the far northern land, described in Greek Mythology, of Hyperborea. In the press release for Iperborea there is a poem used to describe the fragrance and the fourth stanza I think sums up the brief Sig. Villoresi was working from:

There, in the everlasting spring, the fresh north wind

carries the radiant perfume of blossoming petals,

 of unknown flowers, hidden in the snow along the rugged mountain walls,

beneath the morning dew, searching for the first ray of sunlight

Iperborea captures the clean feel of flowers blooming in a northern climate and in particular how defined the green quality is against the frozen backdrop in early spring.

 

 

 

Iperborea opens with a very strong green accord in place and it is partnered with citrus and peach. The fruity notes never really attain equality as all through the early phases it really is the green floral feel that is front and center. The heart becomes more defined as the woodiness of magnolia contrasts beautifully with the lily of the valley and mimosa, also present. This feels like when the sun breaks out of cloud cover and you feel the warmth of the rays while the air around you is cool. Iperborea finishes with jasmine holding court along with, what I would describe as, the signature Lorenzo Villoresi musk.  Even with that familiar touchstone of musk in place Iperborea is so intently green and floral I would have been hard pressed to identify it as a Lorenzo Villoresi fragrance if I wasn’t looking at the bottle as I sprayed it.

Iperborea has way above average longevity and above average sillage, typical for the Lorenzo Villoresi fragrances in general.

After a four-year wait I was expecting something Oriental instead Sig. Villoresi chose to confound my expectations and create something entirely different but equally enchanting to what had come before.  

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample supplied by Lorenzo Villoresi.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Director