A nauseatingly powerful powdery floral that also manages to be incredibly headache inducing, Prada Paradoxe Virtual Flower is one of my least favorite releases from a high-end brand. I don't enjoy the Paradoxe line too much, with the latest in the line-up (Sweet Chemistry; I haven't tried Radical Essence yet) being my "favorite" given how much it deviates from the original Paradoxe DNA, but Virtual Flower is easily the worst of the bunch for me.
Virtual Flower opens with what can only be described as sickeningly sweet grass clippings. It smells very synthetic straight from the jump and immediately gave me a headache. It takes about two hours for this intensity to die down, when the fragrance then reminds me of a very potent fabric softener. It smells very matronly and powdery. If you happen to like this scent, I would imagine you would appreciate the intensity of its sillage. For me, I couldn't wait for the experience to end. It begins to die down around the 6 hour mark, and fades completely by 8 hours.
Other reviewers have noted that AI played a part in giving this fragrance life, and if my experience with this is anything to go off of, the machines still have quite some time until they are able to create a scent that is truly appealing to everyone. It suddenly made sense why this smelled so disgustingly powdery and synthetic. I tried to find articles online about the making of this to learn more about how it was done, like whether the AI was given "creative freedom" or simply sped up the formulation process, but every article I found about it seemed like they were "reviews" disguised as ads that were also written with (or even more likely, by) AI. The unfortunate truth is that there will likely be more of this occurring rather than less (whether it refers to AI assisting in perfumery or writing), but we can thankfully raise a glass that neither have matched human ingenuity just yet.
