A Few Remarks About Rose Perfumes for InStyle Magazine
I never promised you a rose garden.
In the fragrance-focused part of my life, 2003 was a crucial year for me: I purchased my first bottle of Diptyque L’Ombre dans L’Eau eau de toilette, joined Makeupalley.com’s perfume message board, and relocated back to New York City, where I started shopping for fragrance and makeup with pent-up fervor and a long wishlist of things to try (thanks to Lucky magazine and the above-mentioned message board). I’m still friends with some of the women I met online that year, and I still wear L’Ombre dans L’Eau, although I now love the eau de parfum version even more.
That same year, Stella McCartney launched Stella, a rose-amber perfume in a modern-yet-classic, ombre purple bottle. (The perfumer behind it was Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud.)
Although a few best-selling rose-inflected perfumes from the 1980s and 1990s—like YSL Paris and Lancôme Trésor—were still widely available, and the rising field of niche perfumery had already released some cult-classic rose scents, Stella felt like something new and received a lot of well-deserved attention. It was easy to find at Sephora and department stores, it had the “rock royalty” imprimatur of its brand founder, and it was a beautiful fragrance, full stop. I’m still very sad that it was discontinued sometime around 2019.
I’ve been thinking for a long time about various waves of rose perfumes, from the 1980s to the golden era of niche perfumery in the 2000s to the past few years, so I was thrilled when journalist Emily Kelleher contacted me to chat about this very topic. You can read her in-depth piece “Reinventing the Rose: The Scents Seducing a New Generation,” part of InStyle’s spring fashion and beauty issue, here.
I don’t even know how many rose-inspired I own or have owned over the years, but a few “contemporary roses” that I wear often are Régime des Fleurs x Chloe Sevigny Little Flower, CB I Hate Perfume Tea/Rose, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Rosé, and Gallivant London. Do you have a favorite rose perfume that deserves a shout-out? Feel free to mention it in the comments!
Image: the cover for Ministry’s With Sympathy (1983), photographed by Alberto Rizzo
No rose perfume hits for me quite like Portrait of a Lady. Shamefully basic, perhaps, but I always come back to it. Can't knock a classic. For a rose that's closer to a soliflore and doesn't whomp you over the head like POAL, I dig Essential Parfum's Rose Magnetic.
My favorite modern rose (aside from myself, hehe) is Byredo’s Rose of No Man’s Land! I love the peppery notes and the name makes me feel like a badass every time I wear it.