Roja Parfums Scandal Essence de Parfum Digital black and white collage by Olya Bar using original images by Gaston Paris/Roger Viollet Getty Images, Jean Beraud, and John Kobal 1935.
How do you bottle a Scandal?
And when it’s finally captured, would you wear it daily or indulge only when you are ready to cause a ruckus? As a long-time admirer of Roja Parfums, I love how multifaceted Roja Doves’s work is, each fragrance defines luxury. With Roja Parfums Scandal Essence de Parfum my imagination immediately flew to a trio of historical scandalous women. I could write of their virtues but I am much more inclined to write of their sins. They certainly had plenty of scandals trailing behind them like fragrant sillage.
Roja Parfums Scandal Essence de Parfum digital collage with flowers by Olya using original images by Gaston Paris/Roger Viollet Getty Images, Jean Beraud, and John Kobal 1935
The opening notes of bergamot and green lily of the valley in Scandal Essence de Parfum make me think of Julie d’Aubigny, also known as “La Maupin”, a sword fighter and opera singer who lived during the late 1600s. She frequently dressed as a boy and engaged in the sport of fencing. In her adulthood when her lover’s parents trapped the woman she loved in a convent, Julie plotted an escape by stealing a dead nun’s corpse, placing it in her lover’s bed, and setting it on fire. The escape was a grand success and the aroma of heady lilies lingered behind them as they ran through the gardens in the midst of the blazing fire. Julie went on piercing flesh and hearts most of her life, dying tragically in her thirties, as if her life represented the fleeting top notes, beautiful and heady but gone rather quickly.
The heart of the fragrance is deep and ferocious, a blooming bouquet of white florals – Josephine Baker, an American-born French entertainer, an erotic dancer in the 1920s, her seductive and flirtatious personality seems suited to Scandal Essence de Parfum. Seductive and flirtatious, her hips moving rhythmically and slowly to the music, I imagine that she is hypnotizing her audience and exuding the intoxicating aromas of jasmine and gardenia. Baker turned heads in her iconic banana skirt outfit and would often perform with her pet cheetah. In her personal life, her bisexual and extramarital relationships would later serve as an inspiration for the novel Scandalous, Josephine Baker was an activist, a sinner, a saint, a trailblazer (Baker was the first African American woman to star in a major motion picture, the silent film “Siren of the Tropics”) and lived a double life as a French spy against the Nazis.
Marlene Dietrich by Eugene Robert Richee 1930 in the film “Morocco”
I lose myself completely in the dry down, its whispers close to my skin. German born American actress Marlene Dietrich is a woman whom I envision wearing Scandal Essence de Parfum, outspoken in her anti-Nazi views, defying Adolf Hitler and refusing to star in any “propaganda” films. She seduced both Joseph Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy and was infamous for sexual appetite. “In Europe, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman –we make love with anyone we find attractive.” Classic Dietrich. I image her lounging in dimmed light, alabaster skin radiating creamy tuberose mixed with the smoke of her cigarette, fur draped over her naked shoulders. The air is thick with the fragrance of spicy sandalwood and musk, a reminder of a night spent in the heat of passion, without the slightest thought of consequences to follow or the unraveled Scandal.
Olya looking SCANDALOUS
While some perfumes could be beautiful in their simplicity, there is nothing minimal about about Roja Parfums Scandal Essence de Parfum. Its beauty is its complex duality–animalic yet feminine, savage yet subdued. When one finally thinks they understand the essence of it, one suddenly realizes they know nothing at all.
Notes: Bergamot; Lily-of-the-Valley, Freesia, Gardenia, Orange Blossom, Jasmine, Tuberose and May Rose; Orris, Sandalwood and Musk.
Perceived note: Lilies
Disclaimer: I’d like to thank Europerfumes for providing me a bottle of Scandal Essence de Parfum for review. The opinions are my own.
– Olya Bar, Contributor (with contributions by Michelyn Camen Editor-in-Chief)
Thanks to the generosity of Europerfumes, we have a tester available of Roja Parfums Scandal Essence de Parfum one registered reader the USA only. You must register here or your comment will not count.). To be eligible, please tell us what you enjoyed or found interesting about Olya’s review, which scandalous woman do you think might have worn Scandal Essence de Parfum and if you have a favorite Roja Parfum. Draw closes 4/25/2021
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