Villa Primerose
Atelier Des Ors (2024)

I find something immediately abrasive about this. In spite of it being presented as this plush, leathery, musky rose, there is a shrill underline to it all. It's that brittle shriek of amber woody aromachems that I have grown so weary of in releases of recent years. Their penetrating nature clearly are commercially viable given their use, but I feel like they flatten any spirit and soul that could otherwise be present in perfume.

I partly blame it on the social media, in particular the TikTok era, where memes of performance and results-driven expectations have become such an obsession that the industry has responded in kind and the resultant creations are these monstrous Frankenstein scents lacking in nuance and oppresively powerful in sillage. Whatever core of their concepts are held hostage: rose is muffled, iris is forced into "bomb" status (eye roll), and musks are bossy globules.

This release is a sign of the times, and I must wash it off so I can sleep.