My Love is Like a Red Red Rose

Champagne, chocolates, a single red rose...
What would you give your Valentine?

Wine would last the evening, chocolates maybe the weekend, a cut rose a few days. What about something more permanent, a rose perfume?
A rose - is a rose - is a rose they say, but they're not all the same. 

Just as roses are different from each other so are rose perfumes. There are thousands to choose from, and to make things easier I’ve selected twelve to look at; they range from the classic to the modern and come in a variety of styles.

They are divided into two broad categories: naturalistic - or garden roses, and fantasy roses; and as garden roses are the most straightforward we’ll begin there.

Garden roses essentially aim to bottle nature and bring her into the boudoir, and Atlas Mountain Rose is a good example of that. It's a light delicate pink rose with accents of lemon and spice, which is said to be similar to the legendary Paul Smith Rose. The story goes that this was developed using a headspace sample of the living blooms, growing on a variety of rose that was bred as a tribute to the fashion designer.

Both of these perfumes are hard to find, but if you (or your Valentine) like fresh garden roses they are worth tracking down on the Internet.

The other garden rose in this survey is Rosa by Santa Maria Novella. This is a more powdery-sweet version of a natural rose, which already interprets the smell of nature - rather than just representing it. Having said that, Rosa has a quaint charm which recalls the old-fashioned rose-violet bouquets that were very popular at the start of the twentieth century. 

Those who find Rosa Santa Maria too 'perfumey' may prefer Rose Aria by Heeley. This is a 2021 iteration of the garden rose, which has saffron and sandalwood - and much less rose. Woody amber and a powdery veil give a languid roundness to this sour green rose-on-a-stem, and so - although it’s called Aria - it's more an ensemble than a solo. It's not really a garden rose any more. 

From Rose Aria we next go back in time to a perfume that laid the foundations of the Powdery Bitter-Sweet rose; Paris. A winning mix of fluffy pink sweater and Dr Marten boots, Paris was a dense-powdery rose-violet bouquet ... with attitude. It was a great success with young women in the 1980's, perhaps because it was a new kind of feminine perfume, one that was pretty - but level headed at the same time. The classic original version can still be found on the Internet.

Aurélian Guichard's Radical Rose has an intensity similar to Paris, but here it's a modern take - which drops the rose-violet theme. Radical is a dissonant harmony of dusty sweetness and resinous rose. With a dark underpinning of patchouli and labdanum, this would appeal to those who like Angel, and Aromatics Elixir, which it vaguely recalls.

Reaching a peak of intensity we come to Atomic Rose - with its nuclear sillage. This is a typical modern construction, designed for people who want their perfume loud and long - and are not concerned with quality of expression. It’s a thin layer of rose over a huge core of ambrox materials.

Shanti Shanti is an invocation of peace in Sanscrit, which comes as a relief as we step back from the brink. A sweet spicy-dusty rose, it still has a note of ambrox, but conjures the image of spicy rose-petal tea with milk. If you want a gourmand rose, this one points the way.

With peony - which was popular in 2013, and hawthorn - used in Fahrenheit, Kâshân Rose has a bitter-angular feel that’s a bit like Cristalle (albeit the style is different). It's a fresh woody rose, dry and piquant (and the rose is quite small). It isn't 'nice' but it does have a certain intrigue.

Our path now veers to the aquatic, as the name Rose Atlantic implies. It's a grapefruit, on a hot beach, and a tiny rose. The grapefruit is so long lasting, and prominent, it’s an unusual rose to say the least - if it's one at all...

Finally we come to Rose Tonnerre, or Une Rose as it used to be called. Rich and gothic, this peppery rose scales the heights and plumbs the depths with a crushed velvet intensity. Grand Perfumery at its most opulent, this Thundering Rose could only have one drawback; when would you wear it? To the Opera?

As we have seen in this gallop through rose perfumes, there are almost as many styles of rose on the perfume shelves, as there are in the gardens of the world.

Rose is not only the most beautiful of flowers, it's also the most mutable; gracefully accepting the myriad forms a perfumer dreams up for it.