After reviewing Dolce & Gabbana´s pricey Velvet Love, and praising it for its stunning sensual carnation, i thought i would revisit this very different take on the same flower, Vitriol d´Oeillet.
This is a modernized old-fashioned dandy fragance. Like a stylish costume movie from this year, or last year, or next year. The retro spirit is there, but the nowadays audience can relate to it and feel thrilled and captivated by the period.
And so, in the line of many pepper-based recent releases, the carnation spicy side is taking over the opening and great part of the developement of the fragance. Lets say, if you take an ingredient as the center of a formula, you add some other ingredients that enhance certain facets of it so you provide the fragance with a point of view and a message... well, in this case the enhancers (heavy doses of different peppers, mostly, clove and a sweet, alluring hoary stock) are almost dominant , almost but not to the point that the carnation is lost, quite the contrary, because they are all pointing at the same direction: carnation, at the very center, or certain idea of carnation, more than a faithful botanical portrait of the plant.
Although Vitriol has clearly a polite floral character (carnation, but also rose) the abrasiveness of the fragance is very evident to me, specially in the first hour. Nevertheless for some people this carnation was not angry enough, and felt dissapointed. Not my case. This dandy is angry under his beautiful features, like a victorian version of american psycho. He smiles and you dont see the punch coming. I detect a tinkling radiant woody note amidst the pepper and the dainty rosy petals, like a scalpel, chemical, inorganic. Lutens suggests Dr. Jeckyl and Mr Hyde. I think of Dorian Gray.
This formal flower refinement with the underlying violence is very intriguing, and it has an ironic, mocking mood; very much like the same Lutens´ Confucius-like statements about his own fragances. I regard at it as a really elegant choice for women and men, and i think i would consider investing in a bottle, because it is an extremely long-lasting, rather linear, fragance and of course because i like it.
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Sfonativeboy 
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