Eau de Protection Rossy de Palma Etat Libre d'Orange 2007
17
Top Review
Warning: Patchouli
Not being familiar with Rossy de Palma, the woman who inspired this fragrance, I went Googling to ascertain the nature of her celebrity. It turns out that she is a Spanish actress known for her work in the films of Pedro Almodóvar and (please forgive me, Gentle Reader) not exactly an oil painting. My ignorant opinion of Rossy de Palma aside, ELDO gets a lot of credit in my book for selecting an atypical muse as inspiration material rather than the usual teen idol or Hollywood starlet. For a company that sometimes gets a bad rap for using shock tactics as a marketing tool, Eau de Protection strikes me as a thoughtful, intelligent launch.
The perfume itself was an instant love for me because it has so much in common with my beloved Epic Woman and can be had for less than half the price. Eau de Protection opens in fresh fashion much as a natural rose would with some sparkling bergamot, but rapidly transcends the true flower by incorporating a number of darker notes. Before you know it, the rose is quite poisonous, but all the more alluring for being so. Eau de Protection uses a similar strong peppery note to the one I find so appealing in Epic, but replaces the caraway with ginger, rendering Eau de Protection less pickle-like and a bit more wearable. While Eau de Protection showcases a fairly nice Bulgarian rose, Epic revolves around the headier Damascus variety. Both contain incense and patchouli; the Amouage favoring a gorgeous silver frankincense and the ELDO being heavy on the patchouli, and therein lies the rub with this perfume.
Patchouli is a polarizing note, perhaps because some associate the smell with the '60s counterculture and the tumultuous events that surrounded it. My first wearing of Eau de Protection was at an outdoor event of a fairly conservative nature. In my defense, I wasn't familiar with the note pyramid and stupidly figured that Rose Frag = innocuous. Not! An offended woman who happened to be seated nearby sniffed ostentatiously while glaring at me as if I were The Whore of Babylon. In a nutshell, Eau de Protection has great, big sillage and is not the ticket for fragrance-phobic environments. Longevity is excellent. Many thanks to the rock star from South Africa who turned me on to this beauty, which is absolutely bottle-worthy.
The perfume itself was an instant love for me because it has so much in common with my beloved Epic Woman and can be had for less than half the price. Eau de Protection opens in fresh fashion much as a natural rose would with some sparkling bergamot, but rapidly transcends the true flower by incorporating a number of darker notes. Before you know it, the rose is quite poisonous, but all the more alluring for being so. Eau de Protection uses a similar strong peppery note to the one I find so appealing in Epic, but replaces the caraway with ginger, rendering Eau de Protection less pickle-like and a bit more wearable. While Eau de Protection showcases a fairly nice Bulgarian rose, Epic revolves around the headier Damascus variety. Both contain incense and patchouli; the Amouage favoring a gorgeous silver frankincense and the ELDO being heavy on the patchouli, and therein lies the rub with this perfume.
Patchouli is a polarizing note, perhaps because some associate the smell with the '60s counterculture and the tumultuous events that surrounded it. My first wearing of Eau de Protection was at an outdoor event of a fairly conservative nature. In my defense, I wasn't familiar with the note pyramid and stupidly figured that Rose Frag = innocuous. Not! An offended woman who happened to be seated nearby sniffed ostentatiously while glaring at me as if I were The Whore of Babylon. In a nutshell, Eau de Protection has great, big sillage and is not the ticket for fragrance-phobic environments. Longevity is excellent. Many thanks to the rock star from South Africa who turned me on to this beauty, which is absolutely bottle-worthy.
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