Iris Nazarena
Aedes de Venustas (2013)

A very dry iris, and leather, it reminds me of Traversée du Bosphore by L'Artisan. It is dryer and less sweet, as if you got closer to a desert. I just seem to bring out the leather mainly, in both of them. The longer I wear it, the nicer it becomes. I dont get any cigar and whatsnot. The dryness if the iris remains though. If I didnt own Traversee then I would buy this

Golgotha by Edvard Munch 1900

Iris is definite up front, at the opening, however it steps back to allow an interplay between the Ambrette and fruit of the Juniper. This provides for an airy opening reminiscent of the "Grappa" of Chanel 18 and a nod to the Rose is almost, Chanel-like.
This then heads to the Woods, dry and almost bleached.
Incense comes as a Smokey aura to my skin, like that of an ashtray, distant. As this fume and Iris mate it strikes me as Leather and Masculine in finish.
Quiet and Contemplative. Art.
If I wasn't so taken by Fazzolari's bright and buttery Feu Secret.... Iris Nazarena would be a wonderful choice.

I am testing this again today - I really hope my nose was off yesterday. Will update at end of the day.
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Sadly, this was still not working for me. Time to trade or sell.
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I always hate being the one to go against the flow...

Wait, no that's not quite true. But in this case, I do feel awkward. Why? Because I believe my nose must be broken. You see, everyone else smells something that I do not. I smell something extremely sweet, with barely a hint of iris, except in the opening. No leather, no incense, no spice...I seriously just rechecked the bottle to make certain I had the correct bottle!

I DO smell the Rose de Mai - which incidentally is rather lovely, but I was thinking this would be a collaborative note, rather than the dominant.

It is no doubt a very pretty scent. But for a lover of the cool breath of iris, this leaves my heart wanting more.

When Iris Nazarena was released, in 2013, the perfumer, Ralf Schweiger explained that he “had to find a point of difference with Chanel N°19,” presumably because N°19 is viewed as one of the key reference points in the iris genre.

That remark puzzles me because I don't think any of the iris perfumes released since N°19 have had to struggle to distance themselves from it – no perfume really smells like it, either then or now. Furthermore, N°19 always struck me more as a green floral than an iris soliflore – the galbanum, to me, is as important a player as the iris (if not more). The vintage EDT had a wonderful, crisp leather in the dry down that is sadly missing in today's version.

Iris Nazarena is definitely a modern iris, if that's what the perfumer meant by finding a point of difference with the Chanel. It is, despite the plethora of notes, as sleek and as streamlined as a Barcelona chair. It is cool to the touch, like a piece of steel. Not bitchy, like N°19 – just completely controlled. If N°19 is Joan Crawford towering over you with a wire hanger, then Iris Nazarena is Claire Underwood lifting her chin coolly against a barrage of insults.

What I like most particularly about Iris Nazarena is the way that the perfumer slyly adjusts the color and texture wheel throughout the life of the fragrance, changing it from cold grey steel (iris roots, clean and ethereal) to dusty suede flushed with hot pink (juniper berries, the green apple peel of ambrette, rose) to white dust (incense, smoky woods) and finally to a crisp wintergreen glove (vetiver, camphor).

Iris is the significant driver behind the total smell – but the iris picks up something every other element it meets along the way. Apart from the opening, where it stands alone, cold, crisp, and slightly earthy, the iris is woven so tightly into the carpet of notes that it becomes part of the musky, sourish cedar that swells up behind the topnotes and merges its cool dryness completely with the ashy incense.

It is slightly smoky, dry, woodsy - reminding in some parts of the way Sycomore and Timbuktu wear on my skin. I admire its dry elegance but don't connect emotionally to its beauty – it strikes me as overly mannered and remote.

At one point, though, I think that I could really get into this. This is the point at which the juniper berries and apple peel aromas of the ambrette-rose combination start to flush the cool grey of the iris with the warmth of fruit, alcohol, and bread. Suffused with this hot, rosy glow, the scent picks up the sensual muskiness of clean human skin and begins to feel a bit more unbuttoned. A cool, raspberry leaf-like note – or a touch of camphor from the juniper – sharpens the glow and brings it into high definition. Everything is pulling together at this point, and I am on board.

But the dial is soon turned back down again, draining the rosy warmth from the iris, and fusing it to a sourish leather base constructed with a salty, marshy vetiver. But don't mind me – I have a particular sensitivity to both cedar and vetiver, and here we have both of them in full force. It's not for me personally, but I bow down to its chilly, changeable beauty. I think this would be perfection on a man's skin.

Regina Algida...

There is a handful of very old cloth shops in my hometown, which have not undergone a renovation since the '70s. Upon initial spraying Iris Nazarena smells exactly like they do. Perhaps there was some very popular and widely used air freshener back then, or more likely something used in the proccessing of the fabrics, and thus the characteristic smell has pervaded their walls permanently. And for some strange reason, I was feeling rather uncomfortable being in such shops as a child, although I loved the seemingly endless variety of their merchandise. This "blast from the past" nostalgic quality slowly fades away after a couple of hours, and what is left, is something that an ice queen would leave lingering in her wake. Something like a distant titter in a dark winter night, that clutches your heart with icy fingers. I sense no welcome here, and this ashen grey industrial smell is so devoid of any warmth that it makes me shiver with conflicting feelings of pleasure and dread. Contradictive? Perhaps. But contradictions are not necessarily a flaw, cause while contradictive perfumes can be either good or bad, what they cannot be is indifferent. And this is already a merit, at least in terms of interest picking, and more than enough to make them stand out in our contemporary faceless perfume times. And Iris Nazarena has a face. A scary one perhaps, but still a face...