Description
Monserrat is fruity and bright, yet also warm, burnished and sensual. It opens with a fresh burst of green citrus, and features an accord of musky grapefruit laced through with soft green notes. Carrot seed lends an apricot aspect, while light jasmine adds floral qualities to the whole.
Monserrat was created for the exhibition New Work at Jancar Jones Gallery, Los Angeles. It appeared in the gallery without a title, designated instead by a daub of paint on the label. It has now been named Monserrat after the oil color, Montserrat Orange. The paintings feature grounds that include tints of off-white or pale luminous green and the overall palette employs dusky oranges and ochres. I was thinking of worn and repainted urban walls; I was also thinking of fresco painting—which is the origin of the fantasy note “wet plaster.” Monserrat was launched in 2013. The nose behind this fragrance is Bruno Fazzolari.
magasigareta – :
Very abstract scent. I wore it a couple times without any knowledge of what it contained or what the concept was and the only unmistakeable note is grapefruit which is a huge note in the opening and then it impressively attaches itself to a floral musk so that it can continue to convey grapefruit for a solid 4 hours. I agree with alot of the reviews below that mention something sinister or unfriendly that lurks within this, beyond the surface of this sunny citrus-fruity floral. There is a sharp, green, medicinal layer buried in here that, at times, makes me question whether or not I like this perfume. This is definitely one that you have to wear several times to feel it out. The plaster effect, to my mind, comes from a chalky white floral accord in the heart phase that makes me think of bitter, green lily of the valley perfumes more than plaster. The later drydown is clean but somewhat melancholy and it still echoes a ghostly grapefruit. Altogether, this is a great niche perfume in that it offers up something different to try. I’m enjoying trying all of Bruno Fazzolari’s scents because they have the great taste and quality of high-end fragrance but with the odd experimental twist of amateur, independent perfumery.
DycleBeemiace – :
A joyful summer perfume that smells appropriately corally-carrotty in color. The opening is pink grapefruit and fresh apricot skin. Has a cheerful bubbly muskiness to it, like a white wine spritzer. The plaster dust note is perceptible, and helps ground the fragrance.
I found it feminine on my skin (unlike Five and Lampblack), and work-ready. One of my favorites in the discovery set.
cava72 – :
Beautiful fresh masculine scent. Top quality. I’ve struggled wearing many so-called “unisex” scents as they tend to sway far too feminine; however, I agree with “smellagent” that Monserrat leans masculine. Light, airy, transparent and delicious.
OblibEnlals – :
I got a sample of Monserrat in the portfolio set that Bruno Fazzolari sells. I highly recommend getting it so you can try all of his fragrances. It is similar to Bruno Fazzolari’s Five fragrance. Like Five it has a strong citrus smell. Monserrat has more of a floral smell behind it. I enjoy wearing it at home, but I feel that it is a little too feminine smelling for me to wear it out.
galiano – :
This one is amazing…this starts as the brightest, natural smelling citrus and then develops…the green notes and musk hide out from the citrus until the far drydown…this may be MY summer perfume…fabulous…
wertfs – :
As with other Fazzolari scents, the Fragrantica note breakdown is missing some elements, most notably osmanthus, a.k.a. kinmokusei.
As others have said, this is a fruity-floral. Landshark’s description of this one is dead-on — apricot is the main player for me as well, although it is not overly dominant. I also definitely get a tea note. Of course, the scent of osmanthus is famous for combining apricot/peachy and tea facets, so presumably the tea note here (and part of the apricot) is just an aspect of the osmanthus. I do not get the plaster note. I’m fairly anosmic to musks, so if that plays a role in the plaster accord, that would explain why I am not detecting it. I also don’t get much of the carrot seed here, which I think also is part of the plaster accord. Perhaps for that reason, for me Monserrat is all “a day at the beach,” in JTD’s words, with none of the “undertow.”
This is my fourth Fazzolari try, and so far I completely agree with Luckyscent’s gender-meter ratings of his fragrances. Five and Lampblack lean masculine, Room 237 is neutral, and Monserrat leans feminine but is still close enough to neutral that a lot of men would not mind wearing this. Five is still my favorite by a long shot, but for me Monserrat might even nip Lampblack for second place. It’s just such a beautiful, pleasing aroma.
EDIT: I have worn my sample a few more times, and I like Monserrat more and more. I think that it makes a perfect companion scent to Five. Both are (to my nose) unapologetically bright, optimistic and utterly unpretentious fragrances. They share this core personality, but (as noted above), Five leans slightly masculine while Monserrat leans slightly fem, so I could easily see them as a his-and-hers combo.
Sergey1168 – :
Bruno Fazzolari’s Monserrat is another mostly-fresh entry with an apricot dominance and contributions from jasmine and citrus, specifically grapefruit. Neither committed to the fruity nor the strictly citrus, it’s a blend that indubitably seems geared toward warm weather wearing but does’t fall into the citrus-dominant lot. For me, it mainly comes down to whether the wearer likes apricot or not, as it’s the standout for me, with the jasmine and grapefruit serving familiarly and well-blended enough in the background. I’m not a huge fan of apricot but I’m pleased with its tempered use in Monserrat.
Still, this is not a fragrance I would reach for much, even if I had a free bottle. Five still remains the preeminent warm weather option of the line, over Monserrat and Room 237. Monserrat was a nice try, as usual, and not a terrible performer, though certainly not meriting the price ($110 for 30ml, same as the others) on performance; you’d really need to love the scent in order to buy it.
6 out of 10
mispeten – :
It is interesting to note how much color is a recurring and unifying influence in the perfumes created by the artist Bruno Fazzolari. If in Lampblack he uses one of the most primitive pigments in history as inspiration and if in Five he uses color by means of light as inspiration in his modernized citrus, in Monserrat the artist does a thematic and synesthetic homage to a combination of two tonalities that work well in a complementary way.
Monserrat is named in a clever way, making a reference to a more pastel orange tint and also a reference to the Italian frescoes in matt tones. Monserrat also has a note of a fancy color called Setting Plaster, which is a very delicate rose shade much used in homes with plaster finish. With both references leading to composition, Bruno ventures into a conceptual design for a musky floral with fruity nuances.
It is certainly something difficult to perform in independent perfumery since this is a very frequent combination in the commercial perfumery, but Bruno uses it with all the sophistication and delicacy that the colors evoke, Monserrat has a juicy, slightly sweet and bright citrus, like an orange ray of sunshine on a day when the illumination seems to come in filtered and amene form by the clouds. Around this idea Bruno used the osmanthus and its floral and fruity shades to reinforce the idea’s orange color. A delicate bouquet of jasmine, light touches of rose and lily complement and suggest the delicate rose of the plaster walls. The musk base along with nuances of iris ends up helping to create the effect of a freshly placed mass aroma.
It is likely Monserrat’s more delicate and discreet scent will please the female audience more than masculine, and I perceive that its scent sounds perfect as a basis for applying other perfumes of similar tones – I imagine that Monserrat will look perfect in combination with Cellophane’s Lutens Nuit or Parfums de Empire Osmanthus Interdite.
qtluovrrzpq – :
Monserrat is an easy wear, but not an easy read. It is unashamedly a fruity-floral, particularly in the topnotes, which have a sunshiny, Doris Day vibe. Of course this is where a chill strikes me. Doris Days always scared the shit out of me. That blond, chirpy, starched-crinoline celluloid image was unnervingly untroubled. It’s as if she cast no shadow.
Fazzolari makes a great case for the fruity-floral. It’s not an intrinsically faulty genre, just one that’s been saddled with the low aspirations of the perfume industry. An obvious approach to tempering the genre would be to make a slightly less sweet version, but Monserrat, for all its vivacity and buoyancy, is hardly obvious. A juicy, sweet/tart grapefruit lights up the composition and gives the touch of acidity that cuts any risk of syrup, but Monserrat is flagrantly sweet. The fruity topnotes end in a sugar-sweet violet tea.
Fazzolari lists osmanthus as a note, and the aromatic profile is there, but Monserrat seems to model osmanthus’s form more than its scent per se. Osmanthus is its own fruity-floral perfume. The flowers have a recognizably peachy sweetness underlined by a woody tea note that aerates the scent and keeps it from cloying. Monserrat has a similar inclination, but the fruit and flowers are modulated by the scent of carrot seed, a very particular note that is woody, dusty, putty-like and matte. Carrot seed reins in the luster of the fruit and the flowers and creates a finely grained olfactory texture. This texture matches the ‘fantasy note’ of setting plaster that Fazzolari cites. Carrot seed neutralizes the reach of the flowers and create a push-pull balance in Monserrat. The balance is not the stationary point between two objects, but the active grapple between opposing forces.
Monserrat’s breezy demeanor only partially disguises a shady undercurrent. Up top, Monserrrat is a day at the beach, but below is the undertow. This touch of menace puts Monserrat in line with two other Fazzolari perfumes, Lamblack and Room 237. All three hide something vaguely unsettling behind a facade of normalcy. Call it what you like–subtext, camouflage, lure–but each one carries a hint of danger. Monserrat is beautiful. Gorgeous, really. But it is also chilling, haunting. Lamblack is the dark and Room 237 is the fear of the dark. Monserrat is the fear in a handful of dust.
(from scenthurdle.com)
drymchuk – :
At last, a very dry chardonnay I can wear. A fabulous, full-bodied citrus that starts with a bit of a bite to let you know it’s not like all the other citruses. It’s tart and warm at the same time. I swear I can smell a touch of fermentation and that’s my favorite part, it roughs up the citrus a little and I guarantee you will never mistake this for a bottle of Pledge.
5 hr longevity (crazy for a citrus on me)
Maybe 2 ft radius on sillage. I don’t know, I don’t have a lot of friends:)
The price is a little steep.
I’m quite surprised by the small number of reviews. More people need to try this.
Edit: Typos, additional observation
I see dry plaster listed as one of the notes (per Olfactif website). I have a hard time actually smelling these quirkier types of notes, but perhaps the plaster is the “fermentation” aspect I’m getting. Either way, it’s the heart of this perfume for me.
Try this!!!
S64B – :
This has to be the most underrated best niche citrus out right now! Beats bergamot 22 lets just say that, there’s more out there than Le labo for niche citrus offerings ..
This stuff is so well balanced and just perfect. Not to sharp and not too dull or fruity , amazing and worth the sniff
Full bottle worthy
Blind buy worthy
9/10
28margosha92 – :
I could never wear this. Salty citrus on me and if wet plaster has a chalky note then yeah I get wet plaster. Imo more masculine then feminine from start to finish. Has a late eighties early nineties vibe.
chloevkk12 – :
A huge, bright, fruity floral. Sounds horrifying doesn’t it? It’s really not.
Monserrat’s a BIG scent. Upon application, it feels as though it’s expanding on your skin. A massive jammy, fruity floral combo hits you right away, and these notes are going to be with you for at least the first hour or so. If it were sound it’d be a gong, as, following the initial clatter, Monserrat mellows into a series of concentric waves, developing into something quite different.
Some swift googling reveals that Monserrat is an area just east of downtown Buenos Aires. However, add an extra “T” to the name and you have Monsterrat—a sort of salmon colored oil paint. But to me, the scent smells more like a bright pink than it does dusty salmon color. But then again, images of the Buenos Aires neighborhood aren’t forming any real connections for me either, so I’m probably better off making up my own associations.
The scent starts off with a massive, leaf-and-grapefruit accord that discloses the trace of indolic jasmine and something that smells a little bit like peach. In other words: big, flowery, fruit. Yet this all comes down a notch or two fairly fast, and you’re left with something that smells a little musky and even a tad dry. This musky dryness reveals a delicate hint of an industrial product—a sort of plastic-y resin of some kind. Yet this effect is largely backgrounded, and really what you’re getting here is a scent that feels as if it wants go full-blown tropical but is hesitant to commit.
It all changes again after just a short while. It starts to dry out a bit: the fruits become less sweet, the florals kick back, and what sneaks in is more of a chilled violet leaf. This seems to be the leafy note that’s detectable upfront, but its buried for the much of the initial phase. At this point, the gears are switching once more, and the result is slightly musky, leafy, dry jasmine. The grapefruit somehow manages to stick around far beyond what its capable of. As is the case with Lampblack, it’s always there, yet it’s tucked out of the way. Monserrat gets quiet after an hour, but it’s still quite detectable, and the final stage is probably the most interesting as that’s where the bulk of that opening clang has since decayed, revealing instead notable waves of musk.
Ultimately, Monserrat isn’t my thing, but I can appreciate what it’s doing—especially its transition from something so huge and buoyant to something far more reflective and restrained. At the outset, it reminded me a little of Sonoma Scent Studio’s new Yin and Ylang—that same kind of vivid, yet measured density. But what it transforms into is really where the action is. Monserrat offers an intimate and intriguing dry down that’s hard to pinpoint concretely, but it’s strangely familiar at the same time.