Description
Vero Profumo launched onda eau de parfum in March 2010. The fragrance with the same name, onda, in extrait de parfum created in May 2007. Onda in Italian means “wave”.
“The new perfumes are not the diluted version of the extracts. An eau de parfum needs a structure highlighting more the top
notes as opposed to the base notes, but with the aim of keeping the original style of the extract intact”.
In order to render the scents lighter and easier to wear, the compositions have been simplified; yet that “je ne sais quoi”
unmistakably characterizing the extracts is still clearly there. “I replaced the animalic notes with the unique scent of the
passionfruit – says Vero Kern – I personally love it very much and think that it lends a sensual and erotic lightness to the
composition”. Like an invisible thread, the intriguing scent of passionfruit links the three perfumes: it is at the core of everchanging, unexpected olfactory sensations with multifaceted evolutions.
Vero added passionfruit in the top, and slightly changed the base notes (cedar instead of sandalwood).
Photo copyright: saramarotohebrero.com
Sport999 – :
When I first dabbed on the Onda EDP, I could understand mick_trick’s review that it smells like pine cleaner. I was surprised ten minutes later, when a strong vetiver with ylang ylang surged forward and reminded me of something I haven’t smelled in ages: Chanel no. 5! Yes, Chanel no. 5 with honey & passionfruit, supported by some spicy herbs.
Not a fragrance for me, which is kind of a relief considering the price tag.
appens – :
This onda is with a honeyed base and the citron, passion fruits, ginger, and the basil is on top of that sour honey base. IT is quite not livable when i first sniff it and had the sample but the more i use it the more i get attach to it in away that i want to sniff it more often. The vetiver, ylang ylang comes later on with that dark aspect with the help of musk.
This is the EDP version, later on i’ll be checking the Extrait version and will decide which one to go for.
Edit (3rd may 2019) I prefer the EDP over the d’extrait version as it has more complexity with more honey base than the sharpness of spices in the d’extrait which is already in a fragrance that I already own “je suis Un homme” by TLdO.
mathhs271 – :
You can tell it’s quality stuff from the very beginning. It’s a very well blended and reach juice. But both the juice and the bottle are a bit outdated imo. It has the floral aldehydic moss remeniscent of many perfumes from the 80s, but with honey on top. It’s super feminine and classy.
I can see how many would like it, and I think I might come back to it in 5+ years, but I am not ready for it yet.
Nilopazen – :
Monsters frighten us for the way they tell us about ourselves. Don’t doubt it, Onda is a monster. Vero Kern plucks specific and unexpected descriptors from each of her component pieces. Vetiver (salt lick), passionfruit (floral rot), ginger (sand-paper), honey (musky sharpness),woods (dust). Using these disparate pieces Kern composes a perfectly poised perfume that I could never have dreamed of. It’s not simply coherent, implying that the the odd bits have been smoothed over. It’s right, as if it reveals something important that I hadn’t considered. It should look like Frankenstein’s monster; torso from one body, head from another, limbs from a few others. We should notice the ill-fit and coarse seems. It should be awkward if not uncomfortable. But it is in fact perfect.
So, with my biases hanging out and my eyes a little glazed, Onda.
I turn to the artist not to reassure me of what I already know or believe, but for the unexpected. Wearing Onda gives me a detachment from normalcy that I could just kiss. It’s hallucinatory. It’s the scent of an angel, who, on getting up after a hard fall, adjusts his powdered wig and his jockstrap with delicately gloved hands before digging through the soil to harvest pickled citrus fruit. Fantasy and synesthesia in a bottle.
Abstraction is a tool for reducing components to the properties that the artist find most important. Kern recognizes properties that another artist might not. For all the outrageousness of this composition, it feels comfortable, like the way that a vivid dream can have a bizarre narrative while feeling perfectly normal. While Onda brings to mind a trippy angel it also also simply smells like skin and motion. There’s an expression that pops into my head unsummoned when I wear Onda. “The sins of the flesh.” This expression, like Kern’s perfume, ties together desire, fear, exposure and release into one experience. To pay Kern a high complement, her perfume is gorgeously, magnificently queer. Kern shows the difference between prettiness and beauty and prettiness starts to seem beside the point.
from scenthurdle.com
Lihobor – :
Honey, spices, and cedar. Maybe a hint of fruit peeking through. If I were spreading this on some salmon and barbecuing it on a cedar plank, then thumb’s up. But, as something that says “come hither”, nope. Honeyed scents just aren’t for me.
гений – :
I was sent a sample of this by a friend, and to my delight, I now get to smell what so many of you have been talking about. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to figure out if your nose agrees with what the reviewers say. So, eager to start testing, I sprayed a small amount of Onda on the back of my right hand as we were heading out to the shops today. Wife – not a perfumista – sniffed and recoiled: “That’s an ASSAULT on the nose!”
Me: “It’s a very expensive perfume by an indie perfumer.”
Wife: “And people BUY it?””
Me: “Yes, for $200.”
Wife: “What, are they buying it without smelling it or something? Why would anyone buy that once they’ve smelled it?”
Onda opens with an overpowering Pine Toilet Duck note with an undercurrent of sweaty used pants after an extended session at the gym. It moves to industrial air freshener and stays there. I walked past a public toilet a supermarket today, and for a split second, I wasn’t sure if the waft of Industrial Pine and Lemon was my hand or the toilet (it was actually the toilet, though the fragrance wafting out of there was an improvement on Onda). Once worn for a few hours, the scent remaining on the skin is what I imagine the soiled, sweaty pants after a hard day’s work.
If you’ve always wanted to wear functional fragrances as perfumes, and like a honeyed sweaty unsettling note lurking underneath, this will be your dream come true.
This fragrance is the best example I know to date for demonstrating that ingredients do not a perfume make. The work is akin to someone taking truffles, grass-fed veal and the finest red wine in the world to make a gourmet bolognese, only to drown it in discount brand ketchup.
Yastreb79 – :
I like onda edp (without knowing the extrait). Liking Onda or not obviously is an extremely personal question. I-for my part- love vetiver in all facets and this smells like a vetiver powder from India, that I have in my collection.
Actually I didn’t want to review because it’s nice to discover on oneself, but have a question to you onda-wearers out there:
Did you ever recognize the Iso-e-super in it- or is it just me?
It is so strong and inky that it almost ruins the drydown for me…a long time Onda is so good, so beautifully weird and soft and sophisticated and then…hm I was a little disappointed…but maybe I’m too strict, it might lend the composition a certain light- & greenness that cannot be obtained by other material…and in the beginning and middle it doesn’t disturb so much…
Anyone here with a similar perception?
Metxl273JeomiWogkig – :
this is a tremendous scent. i prefer it to the extrait, which is safer, rounder, duller. the edp has a feral depth to it that softens slightly but as it warms on the body retains an edge to it, like it could go ‘off’ on you….but it doesn’t. in this regard, it shares a strong similarity with the musky-feral absolue pour le soir by mfk. onda does in fact stay rather tame, retaining that edgy menace througout its impressive 10 hours. this is challenging but absolutely accomplished perfumery and the first honey-prominent scent i can wear thanks to its sturdy and deep vetiver structure, and man, i like onda edp!
DaphLoota – :
EDP smells screechy and bitter like an old world’ish fruity chypre. The classic smell leaves me interested and wanting to try the parfum. This could be nice if it had more depth and richness to it.
amberhawk – :
Announcing the autumn of fertility, this is (IMHO) a smell to wear as you rot on the vine. The Extrait is much nicer.
8 mille – :
I was thinking to keep away from herbal scents
Onda might have changed this for me
Contrary to my original thoughts
this fragrance made me turn a corner and open the door in desire to look deeper into Aromatic Herbal blends
If fragrance was food for skin this would be a curry
not necessarily because it smells like curry but because it has the potential to fill the space around you like a wonderful aromatic broth
Alchemist cooking style perhaps
Ginger, coriander, basil weave through vetiver, honey, flowers citrus and musk
My favorite moments are when the passionfruit peeks through
Has a strong presence a bit masculine in a good way
Then there is something odd or off with balance i’m sure this is on purpose
and also in a good way
Im not quite sure this will be one for me or not but so so glad to keep the sample in my pocket for when the mood strikes
I certainly look forward to trying the other concoctions of the
vero profumo house
terry – :
The eau de parfum Onda continue woody-spicy notes of honey, the sweet-spicy, earthy, while the iris, ylang-ylang and sensual feature a cleaner, yet more erotic results perfume.
Mewbf884intitytek – :
I’ve found a more suitable name for this fragance:
SALT-MARSH
17Vitaliy747 – :
It is not easy neither to undestrand nor to wear such a fragrange.
It seems to me very strange how so many and good ingredients can produce such a strange smell of sanitizer for hospitals or saunas. I can’t smell any flower or honey or fruit, but only something bitter and kippered. In italian ONDA means “wave” and maybe because I live near a sandy beach surrended by many flowers, above all see lily, I expected to smell something floreal marine. But it smell like backwater among rocks.
kdq612elipseskism – :
A fragrance to be tamed, it is Vero’s wild, dusky, brooding Onda, as close to an alchemical potion as a modern perfume is ever likely to get. In the eau de parfum, the ginger, vetiver, honey and patchouli still simmer with earthy sensuality, but the composition gains an airiness, a sense of space that make the notes an easier fit for daytime wear in the south brazilian winter or any other place wich winter really exist.
The smells that comes to mind are cool wet earth, leather, tobacco, warm wood, smoke. It’s pungent, animalic, meaty, rich. All of that is the opening of Onda,it’s unbelievable, you’ll either love it or hate it, for me it is misterious and unique.
Smith6903 – :
Saying that Onda EDP is a challenging composition would be like considering Marcel Proust and easy read. Onda is far beyond being just challenging, is weird, destabilizing and unusual but at the same time “cultured”. It is built around a solid structure that shows many characteristic of classic perfumery and adds a bizarre, sort of futuristic, accord of passion fruit and vetiver that together with floral pattenrs and ginger gives birth to a strange blend that sits somewhere between a disinfectant, a mass destruction weapon and pure luxury. Overall Onda smells salty/sweet with fresh nuances, flowery with acidic/unripe fruits and definitely sulfurous (urine?). While all of this may sound disencouraging, I still believe that Onda deserves our respect as one of the most intriguing, complex and original compositions around. Onda, more than like a proper fragrance, sounds like a declaration of intent that says “I’m here, and I’m here to stay!”.
On the other hand the extrait de parfum is, paradoxically, more familiar. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still far from being easy to wear or “pretty” but, its chypre-y animalic leather structure brings, somehow, to mind of the beloved Djedi. A loud vetiver-leather concoction that moves on the thin line between glory and precipice, between a luxurious smell and a revolting stink. Earthy, animalic and almost disturbing yet extremely compelling. Onda was definitely an ambitious and risky project just like doing tightrope walking between two skyscrapers. It took some skills and a guts but Vero Kern has successfully managed to walk to the other side. Chapeau.
Two of the most challenging and compelling compositions that I’ve ever experienced. By all means niche stuff.
Rating: 9/10
Imammagag – :
ONDA is not for the faint of heart. This scent could be worn to the office; if you work from 4 to midnight, and then go clubbing afterwards. If you regularly put others in their place and are prone to giving steely stares—then this is for you! It’s a wild mixture of metallic flowers with sharp little thorns, burning plastic, unripe cherries and plums, rock hard lemon sherbert. And when you think it’s all a bit much, a spoonful of honey is added to make the tea go down easier. Who ever wears ONDA is sure to remembered…
zxcdas – :
Onda EDP begins with a somewhat bitter beginning which is a bit unpleasant. However, this only lasts for under 10 minutes and blooms into a lovely bouquet of ginger, mandarin orange and what I presume to be passion fruit. I also smell the honey and a touch of basil. It has been very pleasant in the 3 or 4 times I have tested it. It lasts probably about 7 or 8 hours on me which, for me is excellent. Unfortunately, it has little or no sillage on me. I received a sample of the 3 new Vero EDP’s from Lucky Scent. Of the 3 I love Rubj the most and Onda comes in second place. The perfumes cost a minor king’s ransom, unfortunately, so I won’t be getting a larger size in the forseeable future. However, I certainly recommend testing these for the experience. Onda definitely is made with the finest ingredients as are all the Vero perfumes.
rozikaverty – :
What I loved in the extrait was the crisp coriander/ginger opening, which was very reminiscent of built up soot on a log cabin wall.
With the EDP I get wet floor after the soot was washed off with a hose. I’m just not liking this one, actually. I’ve worn it three times before reviewing, and each time it just smelled ‘stinky’ on me. Also very short lived.
I think thie misstep occurred by taking out the coriander. This is a note that I like, and it was replaced by citrus and earthy florals, which just don’t come together well here. This truly does smell ‘watered down’, as if you spent the day in a wet T-shirt and never had a chance to dry out.
While I loved the extrait, I can’t say the same for this, sorry.