Iperborea (2010)
by Lorenzo Villoresi

Genre: Floral

Iperborea’s soapy green floral top notes do it no favors, since they smell dangerously close to certain plug-in air fresheners. A trace of ozone and a heavy dose of clean white musk join the opening green and floral notes to delineate a blindingly bright olfactory landscape. The aim here is clearly a squeaky clean green floral composition in the vein of White Linen, but this language has already been debased to the level of grunts and monosyllables by decades of similarly scented household products.

Iperborea smells harshly chemical in any case, and I’d be more inclined to spray it on my towels than my self. The musk base note is extremely tenacious, which might have proven an advantage if I actually enjoyed it in the first place. As it is, I’m left with the recurrent impression of just having done dishes or washed my hands in a public restroom.

17 June, 2014

In Greek mythology, Hyperborea was a distant, exotic land. I'm not sure how that relates to this scent.
This is a very sweet, apricot/peach scent, with powdery orris root notes and other airy qualities.
Not at all my style, and I don't even find it particularly attractive.
Seems like a mis-step from the usually excellent Villoresi house.

26 July, 2012

Those that badly comment upon Iperborea have probably never smelt the arm-pit of the most beautiful, elegant and sexy woman-manager that comes fresh of shower and shining (but hurried and barely sweaty) at office early at morning. That fatal  arm-pit smells and tastes like this deeply feminine, cool-warm and corporeal  musky-floral.

27 March, 2012

I'm a recent buyer of Yerbamate and was looking forward to trying more from Lorenzo Villoresi. Sadly Iperborea lacked any of the surprise,depth or changing mystery of the former. Iperborea is sweet, pleasant but not stop in your tracks delicious. On me a mixture of baby lotion and 70s Ambre Solaire suntan oil. Neither a scent that I associate with luxury or art! The monolithic sweetness could have been better if the scent was light. Oddly I couldn't smell it at all for the first few minutes, then it revealled a heavy linear sweetness for several hours before disappearing as though it had never been there.

27 September, 2011

Outstanding. Fresh, clean, feminine but not sweet, white and slightly green. Utterly elegant. It's the kind of scent that makes you fall in love with anyone wearing it. It's Silvana Mangano in a Visconti movie.

13 January, 2011

Villoresi's 2010 contribution is a complex green floral starting with extremely soapy, greenish top-notes which give way to a dominant and rather screechy magnolia-jasmine accord. The first impression, especially the top-notes, did not appeal to me at all, the heart seemed very harsh and uninviting and in the end I recognized the familiar musky notes Villoresi used in his top-seller Teint de Neige (a scent which I love, btw). Iperborea seems like an attempt at recreating classics like Balmain's Ivoire or Scherrer I, but it is less remarkable and is not harmonious ... the name reminds me of the prefix hyper - Hyper- IPER. Everything seems a bit over the top and the scent does not possess the effortless elegance of the great iconic green florals, nor does it please the senses with a well-balanced cocktail of flowers. Staying-power is excellent, but the overall impression is not.

24 December, 2010