Evening Rose
Aerin (2013)

Evening Rose solved my Tom Ford problem.

For a couple of years I've been trying Noir de Noir, because I adore its rose note on paper. But as a composition, it ends up smelling like an aged soft cheese on my skin.

So I'd begun to wonder if anything in the Lauder family used that same sweet, mellow, dried-ish rose that's in Noir de Noir, and Lo! Evening Rose is pretty much just that. The blackberry gives it some jamminess, and the cognac gives it a little bit of a modern feel, but really, it's lots and lots of a very particular rose, so you'd better like it or you'll maybe hate it!

Yes, it's a dried and maybe candied rose like in a loukhoum scent, the rose I imagine I glimpse in Montale's Sweet Oriental Dream before it gets taken over by the other notes. I suspect Evening Rose will have amazing layering potential with the orientals and powder bombs in my collection.

Aerin Evening Rose...someone directed me to Aerin Fragrances because I recently decided I LOVE rose fragrance when well-blended or grounded with darker scents and notes. Unlike it's relative "Rose De Grasse," which is actually a quite nice, linear rose soliflore, Evening Rose is extremely different from almost anything I've ever tried but a fragrance I do not like at all.

Evening Rose opens with a definite blast of discernible jammy blackberry booze...sweet blackberry cognac, as listed in opening notes. Like Rose De Grasse, Evening Rose is not a complex fragrance but a very straightforward EDP with clearly identifiable phases and notes.

The mid phase is rose, rose and more rose; however this fragrance is not harsh, loud or shrill in any way, as many rose fragrances tend to be. If anything, this fragrance smells "absent" because I can hardly detect I am wearing it and neither can anyone around me.

Honestly, I find the mid-notes of Bulgarian rose (or any rose for that matter) hard to detect. And when I do sense wafts of rose, I smell older, weak and rather nondescript blossoms that frankly, smell past their prime.

And I love incense fragrance when well-blended with other notes. But sadly, I detect no incense or smoke in the dry-down (hours following the initial application). To me, Evening Rose wilts into a barely detectable, powdery & (slightly) sour floral-musk fragrance of "I cannot tell what it is I am wearing and what I do detect is not pleasant." Close to the skin, the scent is unbearable...a scrubber! I finally decided to wash off the scent because I feared I was about to become ill.

Silage is poor; longevity is fair. Was hoping this might be an affordable alternative to my other beloved fragrances, something I could enjoy and afford to wear every day...

On a bright note, while waiting for this generous sample of Evening Rose to arrive, I decidedly purchased 100 ml bottle of Frederic Malle Portrait of a Lady-YES!

While I like Rose De Grasse, this is a pass. Evening Rose is totally forgettable and I am extremely disappointed.