Un Amore Eterno Roja Parfums 2016

If love were a fragrance, it would have to be the fragrance of freedom, for the absolute beauty of love reveals itself only freely, independently and completely in its freedom.

Impatience is the fire that is the undoing of all love. It is the age-old theme that kills love with zeal. I feel it as a thousand reflections of my "Appetitus Sensitivus" - like fragments hidden in little intermezzos - throbbing in search of satisfaction of a want.

Therefore, I deliberately decided to be patient and gave the fragrance time, tested "the love" often and at different times of the day.

"Un Amore Eterno" is supposed to be a tribute to the fragrant letters of Casanova. Already I find the idea to be exalted and over the top.

I perform the Y-cut on the fragrance and hold: smells like open lady's bag, lipstick, leather, dull scarlet sweetness, earthy-floral and woody-nutty smells spice the air on my perceptual horizon. The strongly distinctive, yet somehow affective creation with its antique aura doesn't really reach me. It feels heavy and suffocating, like a requiem. The combination of tuberose, clove and saffron finally do the trick for me.

My idea of eternal love is tied to the scope of feelings lived. If something is eternal and infinite, then it is everywhere. Eternal love is like being kissed by a soul barelipped and uncertain. A kiss, but one that resounds for all eternity. Love awakens like spring, unstoppable and warm, smiling and dancing.

"Un Amore Eterno" is, alas, love on its deathbed.

The scent is rather "dirty." "Carnal Desire" would stand the fragrance better. Even then, the fragrance would not be more wearable for me. Often evoke fragrances with me musical associations. This one, however, makes me think of less dignified figures like the lonely writer Gustav von Aschenbach, the main character of the novella "Death in Venice".

"Un Amore Eterno" also shows me that the fleeting ecstasy of the Fall only confuses the senses and catapults one into sudden abandonment. It is precisely this suddenness of the enigmatic that reveals the drive that Roja pursues and Gustav paradoxically finds shameful as the one profound impulse of creation. Hours move crawling without flying, poetically blasphemous and wastefully rudimentary, like a last apocalyptically tinged desire for desire, blinded and unable to perceive that love has already died in its far too tight clothes. The scent of the Britten would have been a good scent to go with the novel.

Similar to the disarray of the torn writer, I experience unwanted stops in no man's land with "Un Amore Eterno." Standstill. At this stage, borne of cloying boudoir opulence, Roja's creation is somewhat reminiscent of "1889 Moulin Rouge." It stays that way only briefly. This is followed by one of the least positive aspects of the fragrance, the grandiose marriage of patchouli and iris. These moments are real compensation for the initially terrible tangle.

The fragrance calms down here increasingly and becomes more harmonious. The too potent spicy-floral and dull-nutty moments from the opening, paired with the ancient clove spice, are now only faintly perceptible, but seem pleasantly supportive and above all appropriate.

It is not the eternal love, far from it, but an average good Roja fragrance. No fragrance that will be remembered, for this there are clearly better at ROJA perfumes. It remains with me the regret that Roger Dove just takes up this beautiful and eternal theme and then misses it so mercilessly.