Reviews of Omnia (2003)
by Bulgari

This was my original review: Gezhundheit! A blast of black pepper which magically disappears, is replaced by a cup of Masala tea with cardamom and clove, and a gingerbread cookie shaped like a Dutch windmill, spicy but only mildly sweet. As the skin warms, a most beautiful sandalwood emerges, long-lasting but close to the skin. Delicious. Expect minimal sillage. Snuggle up and enjoy.
My new advice is to avoid perfumes with black pepper notes. They seem to "bloom" over time and overtake the other notes in the fragrance. So, unless you really like pepper, or you buy your perfume fresh and use it fast, you can't trust that note to behave.

"Omnia" has the potential to be a truly great fragrance, but on my skin, it never really works. The base notes are gorgeous - a warm, creamy almond, with hints of cocoa powder and orange - and the heart contains some very pretty and (to my nose) nostalgic masala chai spices. However, the top notes are too peppery and aggressive for my taste, and they take quite a while to settle into the sweeter and more subdued notes that characterize the rest of the fragrance. (I should mention here that I wear Tabu, and love many heavy orientals - if something is "a little too peppery" for me, it's probably peppery enough to cause convulsive sneezing fits in the vast majority of the earth's population.) The black tea notes are also problematic; while I love the bitter, smoky smell of tea, I just don't find it wearable. It turns sour and dirty very quickly, and when I wear it, I always have the nagging feeling that I need a hot shower.

If you've been blessed with the chemistry and the temperament necessary for tea and pepper, "Omnia" may be great for you. Unfortunately, it's wasted on me.

This fragrance never really came into focus for me, and I tried it in two different stores. I was hoping for a dark, spicy tea scent, but all I got was a thin whiff of distant chai, then poof! all gone. Certainly inoffensive, though.

This is a dry oriental. It begins with an intense, spicy, delightfully complex tea scent. However, the dry down is very flat, and it dries down within about 30 minutes. On my skin, at least, it becomes boring at that point, and almost masculine. Although the opening is lovely, the drydown discourages me from a purchase.

For me, there's just not enough "there" there from Omnia, which is too bad because on paper it sounds like a sumptuous wrap of a fragrance, all exotic spice and melt-in-your-mouth white chocolate (which isn't really chocolate anyway but rather vanilla and cream) and an undertone of light-bodied tea. Then again, perhaps I'm missing the point; while it sounds as though this should be the ultimate in "oriental" fragrance, it's really a truly close-to-the-body skin scent, the type that travels with you in your own space as opposed to arriving in a room before you do and lingering long after you've left. I like the way that Bulgari has taken the idea of fine teas - green, black, white, masala - and built an entire fragrance wardrobe around it, but the Omnia just seems to be lacking the kick, the little edge, that exists in the Eau Perfumee The Vert with its citrusy zing of an overlayer, the Bulgari Black with its almost oily, rubbery undercurrent or the pepper zip in the Eau Perfumee The Blanc. But then again perhaps that's the point; not everyone likes a twist in his or her tea, after all, and so Omnia is there in its own soft and very gentle way.

This isn't unisex? Why not? The spice and woodiness make me think it could cross over, although it is gentle, too. It is exotic, even a mite odd in its blending of mandarin, saffron and tea. Credit is due for originality. I'd say Omnia fits autumn. I'm giving my miniature flacon to my husband to use.

This is an unusual scent. I wouldn't call it a perfume. It's more like an extention of one's chemistry. It develops toward a chocolate dry down. This one takes getting used to. Sample first.