Acqua di Parma Profumo
Acqua di Parma (1930)

The Vintage, is stunning, in regards to it's complex symphonic layering of Florals ala Patou 1000 Vintage. What LMVH has done, quite nicely, is to recreate this piece upon a base Calonic. This has lightened it's glow and extended it's life. It now competes with Creed's Jardin d'Almafi.
It does, however,sadly, have it melding into the Acqua di Parma Sea of Flankers. I project that it will quietly, disappear from the Brigade.
It can be a nice replacement for the growling Fruitchouli of Amouage Jubilation 25. My wife does wear that in Winter (to please me mostly).
I can wear the Amouage year round(and do)because I'm drawn to the Animalic.
A search for the Vintage will present you with a "Grand Perfume", indeed.

This is the smoothest most sophisticated Chypre I have in my collection. I really love this Chypre because it is a complex inhale like tasting a complex wine. I get all the stages in layers in each inhale. Love it! Most Chypres like Mitsouko and even Magie Noire smell best after 30 minutes on my skin but Profumo smells fantastic and complex as soon as it hits my skin.

The most elegant and tenderly beautiful chypre I've ever smelled. This scent is slightly more delicate and plummily fruited than Mitsouko, and less exuberantly animalic than The Party in Manhattan or Jubilation 25, but more balanced than any of those mentioned. I bought two full bottles of the vintage version and wear it whenever I want to feel lovely and grown up and ridiculously classy. I will, no doubt, continue to spend all my spare time seeking out those hard to find (and unfortunately expensive) maroon boxes, just to revel in its perfect pitch and refined elegance.

Impossibly lovely!

Tremendous class, sophistication and style are embodied in this marvelous scent. It is one of those very rare scents one comes across only a few times in one's life: totally original and so well balanced/blended that no one note or notes stand out.

I am able to detect - or get the impression of - civet, rose, bergamot, carnation and cinnamon. A bed of soft florals wafts through the experience. This is what I would have expected Audrey Hepburn to favor, as it sums up for me her on screen personality - poised, elegant and refined.

The subtle carnation note brings to mind Guerlain's Sous Le Vent, created for the unique personality of Josephine Baker.

Quite pricey, but worth every penny.

Genre: Chypre

Acqua di Parma Profumo is an exquisitely poised powdery-dry floral chypre. It's slightly sweeter and softer than Givenchy III, with a creamy iris note that brings to mind Chanel's 31 Rue Cambon. The Acqua di Parma is drier and lighter than the Chanel however, and also more obviously floral in its heart. It's definitely not the dark chypre of Mitsouko or Baghari. Indeed, there is a luminous quality to this scent that I find irresistible. Acqua di Parma Profumo even induces in me that rare wistful sense - so close to heartbreaking - that I experience with Apres l'Ondee and En Passant.

Acqua di Parma Profumo is simply a beautiful thing, a scent that embodies classical perfection: nothing could be added, nor anything removed, that would not diminish it. While it could, I suppose, be unisex, it seems to me so delicately pretty that it belongs on a woman. But there perhaps I'm just being sexist. I suggest anybody with a serious interest in fragrance give this a try. Whether you ultimately want to wear it or not, it's an outstanding example of balance and proportion in perfume composition.

When we tread somewhere with angels at our side.

In the Summer of 1995 the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence was undergoing some restoration and a big part of the artworks was not for visitation. One says "oh, no" for who knows when it's going to be, if ever, it the next time in the City of the Medici. Anyway, making the most of it there I went following the pre organized way to the gallery. I came to a point in which I had to open a door. It was dark on the other side. I took some time to adjust my eyes to the dim light and then saw a guard at the other end of the room, a small bench near the centre and, covering almost the whole wall, magnificent in inderect light, in air conditioned temperature, Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. Not knowing the real actual size of the painting, I was completely took by surprse, a very good surprise. There was the bench. I could sit and admire, for as long as I liked. There were few Japanese tourists in those days, in the 90's.

Well, that's the feeling of smelling Profumo for the first time. I mean the 2000 Profumo, EDP, in the burgandy hard box. Although the Acqua di Parma scent is very close to Guerlain Mitsouko, the notes presented here must be just the heart ones, or any other good chypre, one thing makes it apart from the others, even from my beloved Miss M. Profumo is dense, thick and full body like an aged and refined ruby port. It feels heavy, but it'snot its own fault, we are too used to watery transparent scents of our times. Also, Profumo makes me have a glimpsy of what the old classics, like Mitsouko, smelt like then, when they were all like young vampires. Profumo is buttery, and as such one feels it could be cut in slices, to be spread onto the skin instead of spraying it. It is like seeing face to face, a painting you saw so many times in books and magazines, in films, just to realise it is much more than whatever you had dreamed before. Profumo brings voices from the past to deaf ears of the present. It takes a lot of sensitiveness to appreciate Beauty, as Italians are able to do so well.

Although I think they belong to the same genre, and therefore smell alike, Mitsouko and AdP Profumo stand on their own feet. I love both. And I am a man.