If you ask a random sampling of people what the term “comfort scent” means to them, you’ll receive a variety of answers along the range of cozy, warm, sweet, casual, familiar, soft, sour milk on a faded cotton baby blanket — okay, maybe not that one, but the others suit the needs of this blog post perfectly.
Now, it’s obvious that no one single scent note can suit everyone’s idea of cozy and comfortable, but take just the most cursory of cruises through the fragrance blogs and you’ll notice that the scent that most often fits the Laid-Back, Easy to Love agenda is (*drum roll, please*) vanilla.
Vanitas, Profumum Roma’s take on the vanilla comfort-scent genre, is a sleek, sly work of sweetness with a few skeletons in its closet:
The term “vanitas” refers to a style of painting that juxtaposes elements of life and death (e.g. flowers and skulls), and Profumum cleverly riffs on this concept by curling the edges of a sunny, candied vanilla with a blight of cool, shadowy myrrh.
This is what I wrote about Profumum Vanitas back in April: “The idea of death entwining ambition is expressed utilizing vanilla and orange blossom (stand-ins for life and purity) over a layer of myrrh (the precious oily resin in which dead kings were embalmed). Other reviewers have stated that all they get out of Vanitas is candy and flowers, and while the lush sweetness is indeed prominent, the earthy, chilly undertones of myrrh are ever-present, like a whiff of Grim Reaper as you take your first bite of birthday cake.”
A wise fragrance colleague and good friend once mentioned that her idea of “wearing” a perfume involves 1.) extended periods of time, such as daily wear over weeks (if not months) at a time, and 2.) super soaking. She said that it’s near impossible to get a full grasp of the potential depths in a fragrance’s formula when hopping like some full-on ADD junkie from tiny sample vial to tiny sample vial, or pumping out just one or two scant sprays from a bottle.
It would be like trying to gauge the technical mastery comprising the 7 foot X 10 foot pointillist masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by squinting at it through a pinhole.
This was my experience with Vanitas. I gleaned just enough information from the sample to understand that it was worth exploring further (“part sweet vanilla, part sour myrrh, and with a sprinkling of mellow orange blossoms across the surface” — what? me? say no?), but it wasn’t until I planted myself directly in the horn-honking, tire-screeching path of its outsized presence (6-8 full sprays daily, head to toe, over the course of two weeks) that I got a real sense of the emotional artistry and intellectual obsession involved in its creation.
A few dabs from a sample vial might make you shrug and say “cotton-candy”, but go the baptism route and you’ll be hallucinating a gaggle of sallow goth punks lurking behind the flouncy silk curtains in no time.
Consider inviting them to stay for tea and cookies. Goth Punks might come across a little dreary at first, but nothing cheers up an undead wannabe like a plate of fresh madeleines washed down with a piping cuppa Earl Gray.
Scent notes for Profumum Roma Vanitas are: vanilla, myrrh, orange flower and sandalwood. Yesterday, as I walked past the concierge desk (wait — doesn’t everyone have a concierge desk? I mean, we have one in the lobby of our building, but it could just as easily be parked right outside your front door, you know), the young woman rose up from her seat, waved a hand in front of her nose and said, “Someone smells delicious!”
Uhm, that would be ME!
And let me tell you, that is the *first* time I’ve ever been told that I smell delicious. Well, I mean, in public, and by an unaffiliated strang . . . oh, never mind.
The Non-Blonde has made numerous references on her blog to her passion for vanilla fragrances, and I’m thinking that Vanitas should be next on her list to try. In fact, I insist. I’m officially nominating it this very instant for her consideration.
***Note: longevity is excellent at 8-10 hours, and while Vanitas starts out of the gate with a burnt sugar huzzah, the resinous myrrh sidles in over the course of the next hour or two until the composition is a rather striking Pushmi-Pullyu of a scent (light to dark, life to death, vanilla to myrrh, etc. to etc.). The final drydown phase is a soft, warm sandalwood suffused with a smoky, sweet-incense vibe. And please don’t email me and complain that all you get is cotton candy if you didn’t bother to properly super-soak. Repeat after me: spray, spray, spray, spray, spray and spray . . . and spray, spray again if you’re feeling extra delicious.
