translates to German as: 'Möge der Bessere gewinnen'. The phrase gained both curious and remarkable notoriety during the semi-finals of the 2012 European Football Championship between Germany and Italy, when news anchor Ingo Zamperoni - son of a German and an Italian - bid farewell to the news with a quote from the poet prince Dante Alighieri ('Lo viso mostra lo color del cuore', in English: 'The face reveals the mood of the heart') and a smile that most television viewers considered a bit too broad, at the halftime score of 0:2 for Italy. (Italy did win the match, but three days later in the final against Spain, they suffered a heavy defeat of 0:4.)
'Che vinca il migliore'. No other fragrance combination has shaped the last decade more than that of oud and rose. Like many other successful combinations, the cohort of oud-rose fragrances has established itself over the years from the high-priced niche into the drugstore segment - ranging from exciting to utterly boring, and from very beautiful to terrible. However, what has been lost due to this described spread is the special and new: the oud-rose accord could hardly be more commonplace in the 2010s - and so, anyone who wants to succeed with it today must be good - no: better than good - and better than the others. So: may the best one win!
Whether Ermenegildo Zegna's Indonesian Oud is the best rose-oud fragrance - I wouldn't dare to claim that here. But without a doubt, it is one of the better ones among them. Because unlike many others, who blend these two already strong characters into something that often smells of little more than a cutting-metallic sweetness - which doesn’t have to be bad, but ultimately smells of neither oud nor rose - Indonesian Oud allows both to retain their essence. Their voice. Their presence. The rose is blooming, playful, caressing, while the oud adds its famous glow, which always reminds me of the cry of a bird of prey. The fragrance has a remarkably palpable contour; one can almost effortlessly follow its development and that of each of its ingredients - even bergamot (only very briefly), amber, and patchouli (both more towards the end) are distinctly present. But ultimately, this is a rose-oud fragrance - a particularly beautiful one, in which flower and resin push against each other like in a courtship, provoking and enhancing each other. That’s what makes a good perfume.
Conclusion: definitely a fragrance for someone like Ingo Zamperoni. Conservative enough for a news anchor, capricious enough for a (half) Italian. And although a bit cheeky, you can't really be mad at it.
