Mon Nom est Rouge (2012)
by Majda Bekkali

A spicy oriental which comes cloaked in incense but fortunately not overloaded by the rich ingredients; it has a stately tread rather than a weighed down stomp. That being said, you have to enjoy spice bazaar orientals to get this one, as it throngs with warm elements – ginger, cinnamon, pepper, elemi – bustling through the incense smoke, with a solid backdrop of vanilla-tonka and woody tones providing the foundation. Mon Nom est Rouge is the ambery glow from a bakery which specializes in exotic spiced goodies perceived through clouds of fragrant smoke. My personal preference for such creations – and I must admit to wearing them only rarely – is for them to be a bit less sweet and drier, a touch of denial to go with the indulgence.

This fragrance is one of those dry spicy rosy scents. if you like fragrances like "Le Labo Rose 31" or "Dior Mitzah" or even "Andy Tauer Incense Rose" which rose is mostly in the background and as a supporting note and other notes are up in front, this is right up your alley.

At the beginning I can smell a soft but completely prominent woodsy note along with soft peppery aroma, some fresh rose and a little bit of sweetness in the background. it does smell very nice and mostly masculine.

In the mid I'm getting almost the same smell but now everything is stronger and bolder. stronger woods, stronger pepper note, stronger sweetness and a little stronger rose but still rose is a follower.
The sweetness in this fragrance is very mellow and rose is fresh and watery. nowadays we can see many fragrances with darker rose and syrupy sweetness along with oud and usually some patchouli, but this one is quite different from those and it's more toward fragrances that I've mentioned above.
After about 15 minutes or so incense kicks in that pushes rose even more in the background.

In the base I can smell mostly dry and smoky incense with softer woods and spices while rose is a few steps back behind these notes. almost a linear scent.
Projection is very good and solid and longevity is between 7-8 hours on my skin. good dry woody and smoky rose but something that I've smelled before.

Given the brand positioning, the price, the "artistic" pretenses, just one word comes to my mind now that it's some 5 hours I am wearing this: pathetic. True pathetic contemporary niche perfumery. Mon nom est rouge is a plain blend of chemical boredom, stuffed with Iso E with a whiff of citral (all that luminous, slightly sparkling incense-like thing) and synthetic amber/ambrette molecules (cetalox, ambroxan, ambrettolide, who cares), and some vague, clumsy, random hints of tonka, flowers, fake mossy notes, fake earthy thingies - just to pretend it's not really about 2 aromachemicals any toddler can put together. But basically it's all about synthetic ambers and Iso E. Now I love purely synthetic scents, *but* only when they're admittedly artificial, and they get creative, playful, smart on that – it's always a matter of honesty and consistency to me. None of which happen here. This fraudulent nonsense about roses and elemi and stuff is hilarious (pretty much like the cow crap-shaped bottle). Now ok, I'll stop the rant, but seriously... no.

3/10

Since amber fragrances are not necessarily my favorite style, i moderately appreciate this one. The problem for me with an amber accord is that it ends dominating a fragrance and give it a kind of a standar amber face - incensy, sweet in a muffled way, a little bit grey maybe. What makes this more interesting to me is the focus on the fresh, incense aspect at first - which seems to me to be curiously openened by a bright aldehydic aroma, which reforces the fresh aspects of incense, and it's extended by the spicy pink pepper note (a similar effect can be seen on Le Labo Baie Rose 26). Close to skin you notice a sweet cinnamon and rose aroma which seems to be related to the rouge in the fragrance name. But after some hours it ends in a standard, but balanced, amber accord. Not something that i would need a bottle i guess.

The name may be red, but I am seeing everything in tones of white and silver - waxy white Elemi resin over smoldering embers, white ash, smoking cedar logs, white pepper, and hot stones. It has that same hot-dry, cedar-y, aerated incense feel that you get in Epic Woman and Incense Rose, with the nose-tingling whoosh of pepper that you get in Perles de Lalique. There is a Turkish rose there somewhere, but it hides behind the hot embers, spices, and incense, only revealing itself as a sort of glowing sweetness in the second half of its life. It is incredibly radiant, making me wonder if Iso E Super has been used, but that is not to say that it smells unnatural or synthetic. In fact, it is a beautiful and durable incense perfume that I find pleasurable to wear. It's just not that unique.