Reviews of Rose Poivrée (2001)
by Different Company

According to Tania Sanchez in Perfumes The Guide, this one has probably undergone a re-formulation-transformation. I certainly hope so, because I obviously got a sample of the original stuff - the stuff she says smells like 'dirty mens underwear.' It stinks. Yeah, it's just plain BAD! I am married well over 20 years and have sorted & washed alot of laundry in that time...dirty mens underwear?...yes, that's what Rose Poivree smell like - EXACTLY!

Very expensive fragrance yet worth every single penny. Probably one of the greatest rose scents ever created. It gives me a crystal clear vision of rose bushes and smooth, velvety grass fields on a dry, sunny summer day. Smells very natural, and yes, like I said, along with roses I get very strong smell of grass.

Pepper here isn`t a nostril burner at all, but it`s smoothly blended in to create a wonderful, warm breeze. It`s amazing.
And of course it has some civet in it, showing again how irreplacable ingrient it can be when it`s in the hands of a masterful blender. It doesn`t make this scent especially animalic here; it just creates a lovely deep rich aura as it wraps this fragrance together, and sending it far far away from generic and bland rose fragrances which this world is full of.

100% unisex.

Al lthey have written about it inTDC's website is true "It takes over one hundred pounds of precious Damascus rose petals to produce just one bottle of Rose Poivrée" how true.. the openign notes is just tooo real, i have yet to smell any scent with such realistic notes, ever. Rose 31 pales in comparison interms of the rose note.

Opening note is kinda rich, real and satisfying rose petal in maximum and realistic concentration...30-45 minutes into this scent the rose notes gets softer and one can feel themselves being in a rose garden. the bay and pepper notes ever reminded one of Costes..but beware this is not as spicy as costes soapy? to an extent yes...with tht combination is subtle vetiver, this gem takes an almost emotional turn, this is too beautful to ignore...somewhere in th mids..the coriander pops in and delivers a blunt cut into the equation...and all this while, its only supporting the rose note to decay with grace...soon one can feel the decayed notes of rose petals..so warm and ever so real...

a masterpiece from TDC...without a doubt.

sweaty cumin wearing a dying rose boutonniere drinking a Midori melonball with a celery stalk.

This must be as pure a rose as you can get... but it's not a perfume I'd wear. Way too pure, weird huh? Reminds of the rose candy I had once from Provins, France. It's very shocking that you can taste exactly what the flower smells like. I'd rather wear Voluer de Roses by L'Artisan which is sharper in its rose accord. I have to turn my nose up at this one.

Seemingly a perfect cross of McQueen's Kingdom and L'Artisan's Voleur de Roses. Spicy, musky, and definitely a dark rose lover's delight!

EDIT:

I received a decant of this recently and something has changed. I no longer smell rose so much as I get a harsh mix of cumin and melon. What's happened?

I have been intrigued by Rose Poivree ever since I first smelled it. It smells like an elegant old rose fragrance to which dashes of smoky peppers and berries have been added. It dries down beautifully and leaves an elegant rose scent behind. It would be so interesting to experience how it works on a man. In my opinion, Rose Poivree is wonderful, unique and another Jean Claude Ellena masterpiece.

Rose Poivree goes on as a relatively straightforward spicy rose scent, seasoned with a bit of bittersweet citrus rind, and maybe even some melony fruit. It manages to smell cool and moist at first, yet somehow also very classical – even maybe a tad old-fashioned. This scent has a reputation as a civet monster, and though I’m highly sensitive to civet, I have to say I don’t think it’s all that up front in Rose Poivree. Instead its use is subtle, merging almost completely with the rose, to which it lends a gentle animalic tang.

As it ages, Rose Poivree’s rose accord becomes more and more indolic, which suggests to me that jasmine and/or orange blossom are in use. A hefty dose of powdery musk joins in, and at this point Rose Poivree begins to recall some of the great Caron scents of the early twentieth century. It’s regal, yet suggestive, and could easily have been worn by a tall, slender, dark-haired woman in a bob, a long sheath dress, and a Georges Fouquet sautoir as she walked into a smoky art deco jazz club. Only an hour or more into the development does the “poivre” in Rose Poivree venture into the foreground. The dark, sharp spice adds bite to the rose and indolic flowers while balancing out the powder and civet, which might otherwise have left Rose Poivree smelling stuffy and fusty. Rose Poivree sharpens and sweetens as it dries down to a woody base with just a touch of soft, rounded vetiver. Projection and sillage are both marked, as is often the case with rose-centered fragrances.

As an olfactory experience, Rose Poivree feels very much like a much younger cousin of such classic women’s scents as Fleurs de Rocaille or L’Heure Bleue. It smells nothing like either of them, but it has a similar gravity and mood about it.

An elegant composure of stunningly rich and aromatic Damascus flowers; it takes over one hundred pounds of flowers to make a 90mL bottle -- and it's very apparent. The luxurious scent that exudes and wafts so elegantly and effortlessly holds a divine composure; there is such class that radiates from the scent, that is is unmistakably a byproduct of the genius' over at TDC. Each waft is a subtle burst of hundreds of roses that bloom in your nostrils and glide through your mind; impacting all of your senses. Rose Poivree is calming on the body, and soothing on the soul. It is not a scent you "like" or "dislike"; rather, due to it's unusual substance, it is a scent you appreciate, or simply do not understand. The soft pink petals are instantly recognizable as purely translated from nature to bottled substance; there is feeling and tone in these petals, almost as if the essence of life has is present, and the vibrancy and richness of exquisite flowers that were once in gardens, is somehow captured. This differs from all other rose scents I have sampled in the sense that there was no factoring in how to increase longevity, or produce more sillage, or how to increase the feel of the roses -- simply, it is Damascus roses in a bottle. Those of us who sniff like bloodhounds at our wrists and statistically analyze ingredients, percentage of concentration, chemicals involved, longevity, sillage, and so on, will miss the point of Rose Poivree.

This rose scent makes me completely weak in the knees. Where as Artisan's VDR tends to sink slowly into patchouli/dirt overload.. this offering remains very natural, wet smelling and seductive. This fragrance is a very well executed 'green' take on rose.. and one that stands on its own. It makes a great spring/day fragrance and shines just as well on a rainy afternoon - sexy, delicate and assured. Rose Poivree provides a great shelf-mate to darker rose beast Iquitos... oh, did I mention...I love this stuff?

Scent of roses on the mouillette... no roses nor pepper on my wrists, just a strange note of flowers rotting in a pot of water, if I breath on it. If just smelling it is a picking scent, but imho it doesn't contain anything animalic. Smell like Jean Couturier's Coriandre, like a 70's perfume. Good, very feminine but almost unisex in its drydown, long lasting but not the overrated wonder described by Chandler Burr.

Damascus rose, rose bay, pepper, coriander, vetiver, civet

Ellena's a f_cking genius, the nose's nose, and Rose Poivrée's just another example of his aesthetic (sexual skin scents, the smell of bodies after lovemaking, etc). It's an exquisite, sensual skin scent with subtle edge activated at close quarters and with the rise in body heat. If your seventh chakra is closed and/or you're not having good sex, Ellena's creations might not be your thing, but otherwise they usually kick ass.

Am a rose-aholic and love all kinds roses. My reaction to a generous sample of RP was similar to that of MikePerez. Opening blast of pepper and citrus with only a hint of tearose. The pepper seems to morph into cardamom on me, with a hint of cucumber and the roses a lingering memory. No animal for me. Great scent for a summer evening - I accorded it a neutral because I would not invest in it, although I am enjoying it this day.

A mix of predominating pepper, roses and vetiver. Amazing and wonderful, like a turkish bazar.

Robyogi said it all about Rose Poivree’s place in the scheme of things, so I’ll just put out a basic description: A light rose scent underlies the strong peppers notes in the opening, and these are supported—shadowed by a violet note, which might be responsible for the urine accusations. The peppers are done so smoothly and incorporated into the rose and spice elements so seamlessly that they seem almost like incense to me—not a stiff or elegant incense, but a laid back sensual one. The spices, too, are coordinated subtly into the other notes so that the total picture is refined and…distant. Distant except for the upfront peppers that are immediate. I am intrigued by this proximity / distant contrast within the main notes: This fragrance not only has depth, it has lateral extension.

This is a two level fragrance: The first notes—the addictive rose-pepper-spice-violet accord—are linear and long lasting. Then they oh- so- gradually lose their spices and the violet and they slowly metamorph into the rather transparent dry down of vetiver and civet which I find rawly natural and sporadically animalic. Even in the dry down the rose and pepper are still retained in the distant background. I must admit that I didn’t think Ellena could make a scent this good—he should leave off citruses and granite more often. This is a rose scent that I can live with.

I did not smell the 'dirty' civet note at all when I sampled this - only roses, a slight citrus (grapefruit..?) and perhaps lilies. Nice - but I think it reminds me too much of Rose Ikebana by Hermes a newer Elena fragrance a little too much.

I sat in a cloud of Rose Poivrée last night, a new package. There was at first a sharp note, but it's probably my imagination that it's like the sharpness in your nose on smelling a pepper grinder. ;-)

Then it settles down. It is not sweet and it's not pretty. It's a strong scent. I think the animalistic civit creates a like overripe rose edging on spoiled. But it's so interesting. "Roses really smell like poo-poo-poo". I don't doubt it now. I cannot wait until summer, to have the summer sun work on it, the heat'll make it overripen more quickly. For me, it's definitely NOT a you-love-it-or-you-hate it fragrance. You're drawn to it because you can't tell if the roses are beautiful or not beautiful but the interest in smelling it again and again is as pungent as the scent.

I didn't think the scent lasted very long though, gone in several hours....sigh.

a kindler, gentler cousin of czech and speake nr 88 ??

Wooooo...stinky roses. The thing I like about this scent the most is that it does not pretend that roses are some sort of ideal flower, removed from the humid pungency of the plant kingdom. Let's face it - roses in nature have all sorts of smells about them. In addition to the flowers themselves, there are the stems and stalks, then the earth, and then the smells of the excretions of whatever animals may have passed by the rose bush. Rose Poivree captures much of this mess in one scent. Civet stands out here - more the musky, stinky civet of MKK than a suave, smooth civet of Romeo Gigli per Uomo or Ungaro II. Stinky? Yes...but also very real. I am not a fan of Ellena, but this one may be my favorite of his.

If you have ever asked yourself what the smell of rose urine would be, look no further.

Lovely from the first. Dry and pure (smells like Moroccan rose to me), slightly peppery and herbal. Soul-soothing, but not sweet. Love it.

My favourite rose scent. Fresh, clean, natural and more on the masculine side because of its lack of sweetness. Great!

This is a strong, pure rose scent; the pepper and other notes serve to emphasize its predominant rose nature. My wife said it was "subtle;" I don't agree. It's definitely unusual and, I think, assertive.