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Антоша – :
To me this is a horribly dated, cheap smelling scent. It reminds me of something you’d buy from a drug store in the early 80’s – potent and unbearable.
mupespous – :
A ripe and fetid smell of a discarded banana peel covers a softly clean and soapy, herbal, mossy, ambery perfume of absolute smoothness.
The ripe fruit reminds one of the infamous rotting garbage note of Diorella, with the melon being subtly more floral and moving closer to rotting banana (ylang).
The heart has subtle leather that resembles Le Parfum de Therese.
The soapy, piney note kinda resembles Rochas Moustache.
A gentle cedar node underpins the whole thing. The comment in a review below of sea breeze blowing over a Provencal garden and a cedar grove is perfect.
The whole is altogether beautiful and smooth. If this is a wholly synthetic composition (and I don’t doubt it), it is a perfect example of how pure aroma chemicals can perform in the hands of a master who is truly in command of their craft.
An absolute delight. So glad I got it!
ko4egar – :
A green floral citrusy rose masterpiece. Longevity over 12 h,good sillage.a more suitable version of aramis 900.
I don’t feel sea notes.but a paradise of rose, flowers and oakmoss.wow. 9/10
lud046Unlogrere – :
MASTERPIECE.
yura_aprelevka – :
I’ve bougth three bottles (after shave) …i love it !!!
neozhidannost – :
A treasure of the sea.
This may be pun, consistent with its name and the originality of this work.
Opens with an air of aldehydes wrapped in floral touches and i also feel greens pinches, slightly herbal, but does not change, to be integrated with a touch of sea breeze perfect translates naturally this, saline, refers to sand, incredible.
Endures this touch to meet the moss, giving a dense wood mid tone, classic, almost chypre mixed in sweet creamy touches but very light, a wonderful aromatic architecture, and out of radar, really like a rain in the ocean, or why not in the sand?
Follows the line of Givenchy Insense but with this maritime flair.
Rating: 9/10
basota63 – :
It time I say a few things about this obscure little masterpiece. It appeared on my radar when I first joined this site a few years ago. Otherwise, I had never heard of Mario Valentino or Ocean Rain. I picked up a bottle this spring before its gone forever.
I was always afraid it may be a forward aquatic-given the date of 1990 and the dreadful Cool Water trend. Its nothing like that. This is a classic floral that originates from the nose of Edmond Roudnistka. There has been much said about his masterful artistry below and elsewhere. All that I have to add is this is best way to end a career as an artist.
The only thing I associate with ocean or rain is sitting in a garden in Provence as the surf and spray waft through the garden that is full of herbs, roses and a cedar tree. This is not for club kids or muscle boys. Its totally casual and perfect for relaxing in the garden with a glass of Pastis observing a perfect sunset. It is cerebral and sublime…
nachalnik – :
It’ll truly be a shame when the few bottles of this discontinued little gem disappear from the frag map. If you’re partial to masculine florals such as the original versions of Insensé by Givenchy or Le Troisième Homme by Caron, do yourself a huge favor and grab a bottle of Ocean Rain before it’s gone forever. Don’t be jaded by the garish bottle and box. The juice inside is magical.
air23 – :
This is a haunting fragrance, literally as though Edmond Roudnitska put a part of his heart into the formula, his parting gift to the world. Ocean Rain is an extremely synthetic perfume, likely because it was relatively inexpensive when it was released (not exactly a drugstore cheapie, but not high end, either), so vintage bottles like mine are probably in good shape with little to no spoilage.
It smells like rich flowers with some indole on top, followed by a dense composition of bitter green notes, dry woods, and an incredible amber. It’s essentially an olfactory impression of lying on a moist beach after a sun shower, with a distinctly grey, sandy aroma at its core, very interesting and very literal. The H&R chart lists it as a fresh chypre, but I think the huge amber (a precursor to Prada Amber) and the myriad herbal and floral notes around it make Ocean Rain more of an oddball, an “aquatic oriental,” if you will. This is an incredible perfume, currently going for good prices on Ebay. I highly recommend adding it to your collection if you enjoy old-school aquatics that emphasize more realistic facets of marine environments over the absurd watermelons-bobbing-in-fresh-water thing spawned by Acqua di Gio.
warant – :
A friend sent this to me to check out and I’ve sprayed it on a few times now but am finally getting around to putting some words together about it.
From what I understand, this is a ’90s cult cheapy by Roudnitska, and so it should be probably be read in context with the aquatic wave of the time. Indeed, it’s a hedione beast with an oceanic feel. There’s some cucumber-y calone present, but it’s mercifully buried beneath soft white florals. It’s nothing like the satanic windex-fresh flanker-y stuff that emerged mid-‘90s and haunted the millennium (and still terrorizing malls to this day). Instead, this has a mossy iodine accord over benzoin base with calming green and lavender thing sitting on top. It’s made from some fairly popular aromachemicals, but Roudnitska did a very nice job of sanding down all the nasty harsh bits, and the result is a smooth ozonic floral resin affair. It’s boring, but I think it’s supposed to be that way given the somewhat pedestrian clothing line and its target audience. Thus, a really well put-together cucumbery synth jas-moss thing that feels quite “of its moment.” I picture high contrast black and white photography of some gormless waifs fawning over a surfboard and a glistening ocean. An anachronism, but one that connoisseurs will dig. Cheap as chips, too.
zoli – :
This closely resembles Byredo Green, probably my favourite “green” fragrance. The leather in Ocean Rain gives it another dimension though, and the rose is really nice, not too sharp.
What sets them apart after a while, is that Green turns soapy, Ocean Rain turns woody.
Because of the aquatic notes in Ocean Rain, it also evokes the image of a grassy/floral lining just before you walk onto a sandy beach. Green on the other hand, puts you right in the middle of thick brush surrounded by flowers.
It’s actually kind of hard to describe this one, but it’s a woody/floral/aquatic I guess.
This is a wonderful, and calming fragrance.
zlopyxar – :
Ocean Rain is the last perfume by Edmond Roudnitska. How should we view it?
Roudnitska is known for his perfumes, for his influence on the state of the art of perfumery and, more than many other noses, for his discussion of the art of perfumery. I don’t know all his work. I’m not an historian and there has been very little critical analysis of perfumery as an art form. There isn’t much to draw on for those who would like to know more. The eternal proviso that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing comes to mind. Still, I’d like to write about Ocean Rain.
Ocean Rain is nominally a floral chypre perfume made for the Italian luxury leather shoe and accessory firm of Mario Valentino. It was released in 1990. It braids ideas present in Roudnitska’s earlier works. It comments on the hygeine/human line drawn in his earlier masculine offerings Rochas Moustache and Dior Eau Sauvage. It has a chilly freshness. Where Eau Sauvage’s freshness is citric and a little tart, Ocean Rain’s is closer to antiseptic. It’s also a fruity chypre in the line of Rochas Femme and Dior Diorella but it has none of their warmth. The real predecessor to Ocean Rain is Dior Diorissimo, Roudnitska’s tribute to the lily of the valley.
Even though I’ve never smelled the original Diorissimo, I’ll talk about it. Thanks to the work of Roudnitska we’ve been given some tools to discuss perfume conceptually. An important part of his legacy is the discussion of perfumery. Roudnitska saw perfumery as a place for discourse and I am grateful to him for having helped those of us who wear perfume to think and talk about it.
Ocean rain has a cool, motionless tone that distances it from some of its siblings. Where Diorella and Femme focus on the warmth at the heart of a chypre and suggest body contact, Ocean rain puts a lid on things. It has a dampening tone. It acts more as a filter than a springboard. As soon as it puts forward an idea, it pulls it back almost suspiciously. What seems like a chypre’s moss, and the foot in the door to a bodily scent, freezes suddenly and appears mineral. The citrus topnote doesn’t lead to green woods and indolic flowers, the fullness of hesperidic notes that often follows the initial tartness of bergamot in a chypre. It becomes a cold breeze and leaves behind a clinical wake. Ocean Rain isn’t tentative, it is exceedingly careful.
I’ve never quite know what to make of Ocean Rain. Roudnitska trained us to understand that at the heart of a chypre is a fundamentally devil-may-care attitude. Before anything else, a chypre is about pleasing oneself. Ocean rain reads more as restrained, grim to some. Where Diorella suggests an infinite range of color tones hiding behind each olfactory note, Ocean rain tells you that the world is a blanched sepia. Earthy olfactory tones can the suggest decay of autumn, the freshness through the muck of spring, the vegetal richness of early summer. The commonality is richness. Ocean Rain’s earthiness is less optimistic in tone. It’s dirt as opposed to soil.
Seen as a chypre, Ocean Rain is dour. Perhaps a better lens through which to see it would be Diorissimo. Again, I know Diorissimo from descriptions of the original fragrance, through anecdotal history of its making and from the general writing of Rounitska found online–not from smelling the vintage perfume. Seeing Ocean Rain, the last perfume of a dead perfumer from the perspective of one of his great works that had effectively been hobbled by reformulation before his own death, is a bit ghoulish and essentially fictitious since it is based on so many weak links. But the history of perfume is largely the interpretation of discussions of suppositions of gossip in the first place. I’ll proceed, if cautiously.
The muguet at the heart of Diorissimo is the height of synthesis and a success of abstraction as the tool of a trained mind. Roudnitska chose as his topic a fragrance he knew couldn’t be gathered botanically as the flower produces no fragrance materials that can be collected and there is no other scent in the environment that closely mimics it. He chose this target as the means by which he would show the perfumery of the time (mid-20th century) as burdened and overstuffed. He sought to create Diorissimo not only to create what nature wouldn’t surrender, he meant it to be a lesson in the conceptualization and execution of perfumery.
Diorissimo is the only perfume I have found that in fact presented a manifesto. I’ve mentioned in the past that perfumery doesn’t have artistic movements, as in deliberate artistic explorations and uncovering of dogma, credos or theories pre-existing the art itself. Perfume has genres, which are really objective or subjective descriptions and classifications. Here, Diorissimo stands apart from all other perfumes.
I don’t think that Ocean Rain was the artistic assertion that Diorissimo was. I simply find that the tones used to create a crisp, hygienic tone like lily-of-the-valley as the same palette that will let us take apart Ocean Rain. Ocean Rain isn’t a frigid, sociopath of a chypre, it’s simply a cold beauty. The soapy muguet in Diorissimo suggested a temperature that in Spring is cool but warming. The same temperature in Ocean Rain is simply travelling in the other direction, not halfway to summer warmth, but halfway to frozen. It’s the scent of an imaginary late-autumn-blooming fruit tree.
Ocean rain smell of dirt and wood and chilled flowers. Does that seem unwelcoming? I find it enticing.
from scent hurdle.com
yuv451elipseskism – :
This is one of the most surprising, wonderful and uniquely fresh colognes I have tried.
I get a sweet, subtle & fresh floral and herbs notes juxtaposed to a dry airy oakmoss throughout. The green notes of the fragrance are very wet as are the floral notes. The diorella’esque over ripe melon note is positioned expertly in the composition. I also get some of the seaside saltiness as it dries – as well as a clean plastic freshness that creeps in about an hour into it.
It brings to mind a Mediterranean seaside garden full of just open fresh flowers, damp lavender, healthy herb plants in terracotta pots – but not overpowering – very complimentary to the rest of the composition. That push-pull Lovingthealien mentioned is a wonderful description. It’s wet then kinda dry then wet again. Like a drop of water on dry earth before it gets absorbed. A strange contradiction but it reinforces the natural notes in the fragrance beautifully.
This cologne is fresh and it is very clean without overplaying any citrus or water notes. As a matter of fact this is one of those rare colognes that doesn’t depend on heavy citrus openings for freshness. The citrus is elusive in this one and only acts in support of the heavier floral notes.
This fragrance is all about complimentary notes. There are no notes that stand out dramatically. It is a collage of notes where the overall composition is beautiful because the notes are so thoroughly mixed and incorporated. The individual notes are so well mixed that they lose their individual character and create new scent experiences. Very much like mixing colors like blue and yellow in order to get a beautiful unique green.
It’s a lightly masculine scent and the floral and wet melon notes are what really give it a clear freshness and unique character. I’ve been looking for a clean, smooth masculine slightly bitter floral & fresh cologne for a long time. Today I can say I have finally found it.
So surprisingly wonderful, I just bought another bottle which I have never done before. Would recommend this for purchase by anyone who appreciates unique fragrances.
All that said the most mysterious thing about this fragrance is that it is now discontinued. With something as beautiful as this – it is only fitting and adds to it’s other worldly poetry.
Fragrance Stages:
Top Notes : Fresh Salt Water, Melon, Lily of the Valley
Mid Notes : Floral, Melon, aldehyde, salt water
Drydown : Dry – Powdery, floral, salt water, herbs, terracotta pots
axy358intitytek – :
This isn’t at all what I expected. It’s way better. The opening hits with a green lily-of-the-valley supported by the cool melon note of Diorella and a fascinating combo of oakmoss and sea notes (not “aquatic” notes of the 90s). The green gets stronger, and it begins to remind me a lot of Insense. And I mean a lot! The salty ocean notes get drier and the floral heart begins to emerge. The whole becomes very blended as the aromatic herbal notes come into the fore, giving the composition a richness not common in men’s fragrances. The Roudnitska push/pull is present here, making the fragrance at once rich and dense yet with a sparkling subdued clarity. Salty ocean scents meet precariously with the pool-float note that lily-of-the-valley sometimes exudes to create something altogether insane and a bit cartoony. The oceanic salt and herbal powdery florals are offset by the woody notes. Weird, salty moss and cedar make their way through the other notes in the drydown.
Altogether a lovely composition. You can’t beat the price for a real Roudnitska creation, either!
EXebraJammobe – :
A really unusual scent… when i opened the box , and smell it , the fist thing that came to mind was DIORELLA
and then i scractched my head thinking , that this one smelled very vintage and femenine..but perhaps it was my association with the dior masterpiece..then i read that it was made by Edmond Roudnitska… that is why i associate this with diorella..
it is not the same scent , is just..familiar with it…
badseo – :
I did a small wrist dab kind of sampling and I can’t say there is anything pleasant about this one. The animalic quality is quite strong, but doesn’t last very long. For a while, it seems like a bunch of discordant notes are competing for dominance. After perhaps 45 minutes, a much less potent scent is present, a little mossy, a little ambery, a little green, etc. I’d much rather wear Nino Cerruti Pour Homme, which features a similar idea in the base with a really nice thyme note that comes to the fore. This one doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, so to speak, and I can’t think of any reason to wear it instead of another fragrance that has a sense of direction but is at least somewhat similar. I think the problem here is that the notes seem to want to converge, whereas in the fragrances I enjoy the notes have a sense of separation. Due to the strong animalic note in the opening, I’m not surprised this one was discontinued. My guess is that a very small percentage of the population would have any interest in it if it were relaunched now.
gamburik – :
This is an overlooked gem-a floral, herbaceous, resinous scent easily worn by both men and women. Bergamot sets the dry citrus tone that accompanies a sweet, languid resin redolent of cypress trees on the coast. I also get some nice Texan cedarwood in the base. The entire composition is accompanied throughout by the lavender and basil, making this a perfect scent for summer. Just delightful!