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ondrya2009 – :
I got a sample of Room 237 in the portfolio set that Bruno Fazzolari offers on his website. I was initially interested in Lampblack, but Room 237 has become my second favorite of his fragrances. It is so unique. I’m wearing it today and it is one of my favorite fragrances to wear. I’m trying to describe it. I watched a YouTube video review by Lanier Smith and he probably described it best. I’m paraphrasing but, “Like a fresh clean bathroom”. It reminded him of a nice smelling bathroom cleaner. I definitely agree but, that does not do this fragrance justice. I will have to come back and figure out a way to describe it better. After I finished the sample I bought a bottle and its in my top 5 favorites.
I also like the connection to the Stephen King novel The Shinning. It’s one of his best books and the 1980 movie was decent. One warning though, do not watch the documentary Room 237. I did and its possibly the worst documentary I have ever seen.
friveort – :
Room 237 starts off with a sharp, plasticky note, like a discordant violin. Within a couple seconds it turns into a green floral. Then the opoponax peeks out and a dusty accord appears. After several hours, it gets more bitter and medicinal. I get impressions of an old, dusty medicine cabinet, stocked with expired drugs and ointments, an upscale resort from decades past that needs an interior restoration in certain corners, and a well-read, perhaps dispirited, older gentleman. Unsettling, strange but not shocking like a jump scare, Room 237 captures the essence of a classic horror. I particularly like how the opoponax, typically present in voluptuous orientals, was presented in a green scent. Perhaps the opoponax is the reference to the beautiful woman in the bathtub in room 237. Overall it is avant garde, especially the bitterness in the dry down. Maybe too bitter for daily wear, but I’m definitely intrigued. The strength is slightly more than arm length. It’s fairly linear in development despite different accords are emphasized throughout the wear.
Aleksei__87 – :
One of the weirdest perfumes ever created that can actually be worn, this is a super interesting creation from talented young perfumer Bruno Fazzolari. Disguised as a floral musk, the perfume starts off very innocently in a burst of angelica, opoponax, white florals and musk. But as it begins to settle the weirder notes start to emerge such as daisy, costus, grassy notes and a truly strange vinyl accord. The overall feeling is of measured unease much like the Kubrick film whose famous room of dread the perfume is named after. Unisex (slightly feminine leading) with moderate to strong sillage and enormous lasting power (please use spray button cautiously), this is an incredibly brilliant creation of modern perfumery – one that is intended to take you to a place and induce a certain feeling. It succeeds where Secretions Magnifiques doesn’t – maintaining a wearability while inducing a slight and subtle feeling of unease. Enjoy!
филип – :
I was expecting to be shocked and horrified, but this is actually inoffensive and quite wearable, with only a bit of a challenge in the opening.
The vinyl note, most prominent for the first hour, is less like vinyl to me than just something indolic. It is somewhat challenging, though not even on the same plane as the outright halitosis-like indoles in Rania J’s Jasmin Kama. Certainly that note is more strident when nose is against skin, but a few inches or a foot away, it is an interesting and not unpleasant blend. Aside from that one slightly challenging note, this comes across largely as a pleasant, greenish floral scent. The floral aspects are not overly sweet or feminine, so this remains quite unisex to me. Projection is subtle to modest. So this is totally wearable, even for the office.
It’s the third Fazzolari fragrance I’ve tested. It doesn’t grab me like Five did, nor do I enjoy it as much as Lampblack, but it’s pretty nice.
viva888 – :
Bruno Fazzolari Room 237 is, like Five, clearly geared toward warm weather wearing, but unlike Five, Room 237 is deliberately synthetic and geared toward a sort of bathroom cleaner vibe, and not in a very appealing way.
Still, I’m more or less ambivalent toward Room 237, as, while there are synthetic elements to it, there are components that seem to be genuine citrus, floral, and other plants, though indistinct enough to be pretty uninteresting.
I can’t see the appeal, really, even from a generic standpoint, but at the same time I don’t find it unpleasant. I can’t say I share the hate for it that many do, too, as it doesn’t project well enough to even bring out its bad side, if it has one.
Probably not worth smelling unless you get the Portfolio Set like I did. Onto the next.
6 out of 10
FTorres – :
One characteristic of a unique scent I have observed during my years of experience as a collector and reviewer is their ability to make us appreciate just what we think we hate in an irreversible way. In my case, aquatic aromas and animal aromas are two of the borders that so far I could not break – in the first category because they are highly repetitive and artificial and in the second category because they have a dirty scent that I often do not appreciate.
Here I come across Room 237, which in fact has everything to be a scent of a horror movie by combining two of my constant hauntings in the perfumery. It would have everything to go wrong, right? But then I see myself facing something that makes me rethink what I do not like and a combination that I would never have imagined it would work. I believe that everything fits here because of Bruno’s talent for transitioning in his style of creation between the well-rounded commercial perfumery and the avant-garde perfumery, saturated in certain aspects.
The funny thing is that as much as Room 237 has been inspired by a work of terror, its scent in itself makes me think more of a transgressive attitude and a sensual joviality that seem to me typical of adolescence. This does not mean that its scent is uncreative as juvenile perfumes are usually developed, but that it appears to embody youthful freshness combined with a sweaty aura, full of energy and desire.
Room 237 begins with a more aquatic accord that does well to avoid a prominent use of Calone, so that its output does not smell like egg. Instead, the use of aldehydes creates a fresh, intense, aquatic aroma that leads to melon. You realize that this is not a commercial aquatic beginning by the saturation of what comes next, a bright chord that refers to the newly applied enameled paint in an environment. Then comes the surprise: an animalic accord calibrated between a more oily and skin scent of costus with a faintly fecal aroma of leathery nuances. It is an interesting pair, the freshness with aspects of enamel versus the aroma of skin and leather. And the trick for it not to become tiresome or suffocating is the way Bruno makes the transition, taking the scent to more normal territory, a green and abstract woody base that fixes the scent in a very persistent way on the skin. Room 237 may look scary, though its plot is not evil as the room that inspires it. On the contrary, it is impressive how the combination works, an excellent indication that the problem with contemporary perfumery is not the structures it uses, but the lack of risks in more different combinations.
dracon21 – :
Something vaguely rotten and sickly blended with raw gas in a miasma of ghastly herbs, high school chemistry class fumes, and public restroom disinfectant. I really don’t know what I’m smelling, but it’s wretched. For me, this is nearly as gag-inducing as Secretions Magnifiques. I really should stop “daring” myself with this type of fragrance sampling…
NisteD – :
“Named after the spotless hotel room and source of all evil in Stanley Kubrick’s film , The Shining . Ultra fresh , uncanny , chilling.”
Love the concept , the packaging , and fortunately for me , the fragrance ! Room 237 is a clean in a lemon soft scrub bathroom cleaner kind of way , yet somehow , it works . Imagine scrubbing your tub , and you have lots of lemony bleach bubbles and chlorinated water swirling around , and you have room 237 . You can definitely sense something clean and ‘green’ as well as musky in this scent which makes it a perfume instead of a bathroom cleaner . Very nice , wears close to the skin which is probably a good thing .
This is artistic in it’s presentation in both wear and appearance . I look forward to sampling others from the collection in the near future .
CRIM – :
I tried a sample of this perfume and it is an interesting and strange one, but quite fascinating in its intention. It tries to “depict” the forbidden room of the film “The Shining” and does so with a cold view on the past. It does bring to mind senses of Ajax cleaner and shower curtains and tiles and bleach. Although that would make it seem like a bizarre and unpleasant scent, it actually is quite nice and has an astringent lemony quality that is reminiscent of those napkins that come in sealed bags for use in restaurants. There is something comforting about the smell, although I would think it can really only be worn on certain occasions. Still it is definitely worth a try.
leriadielia – :
This blasts right out to confuse you! I have absolutely no idea what I am smelling…and I can’t stop smelling! That is, unfortunately, less than two hours later, when Room 237 fades into a distant horror movie memory. I personally don’t get vinyl, but perhaps there is a combination of floral, herbal and musk that projects that way? Something synthetically sanitary…that familiar new “something” smell? Hey, whatever it is, it works…just not long enough on me, and for that I would pass, but this deserves 2 thumbs up!
Paifsclal – :
Oh no no no no no, this is just soapy rubbery type of fragrance. It has that dirty soapy water essence, the kind of an unknown unnamed soap that you would buy when you want to save money just to wash dishes. The essence of recently washed bathroom in a 1 or 2 stars cheap hotel in the big city. Quite disturbing to my nose.
jaav – :
I had the pleasure of sampling this for a few days and have to say it was a very intriguing experience. One can’t escape that green tiled bathroom of horror from Kubrick’s masterpiece. That said, there is a bright cleanliness that speaks to freshly scrubbed tile and new bathroom rugs and shower curtains. What I smell is an otherworldly clean that is both comforting and somewhat uneasy. I suppose Jack Torrence felt the same way as he walked tentatively into room 237.
Accuttmal – :
From time to time, niche perfumeries become so overcooked in concept that one is left not with the lingering impression of a fragrance that transports but a laugh at language and the sweat of execution. There are too many offenders to name here.
On the other hand, Bruno Fazzolari delivers a fragrance oddball pleasingly absent of the what-might-be language-wise, considering that the concept of Room 237 refers to a ghoulish scene in “The Shining.” Rather, Fazzolari delivers a neat precis: “Room 237 is a perfume inspired by the color and atmosphere of the source of all evil in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. A soft, enveloping, soapy-green scent that’s both highly wearable a little disturbing, Room 237 fuses clean musk and resins with synthetic plastic and vinyl notes. It will keeping you sniffing at your wrist even though you know something about it feels wrong.”
And that’s it! What a great description! Simple, effective, and leaving you lots of room to go awry on your own and go purple-prose as you will. There’s no need to, however, despite “flea bane” being the first listed note in the fragrance pyramid. Flea bane is a daisy note, and I don’t smell it at all. Room 237 is largely opoponax and angelica scent, with costus root adding a sly dirty-hair note. Bay rum in the beginning makes you think Room 237 is going to smell like an herbal hair tonic but it doesn’t; the opoponax drags it into a genderless middle ground. “Peculiar florals” and “vinyl shower curtain” are recessive notes–who knows what they are really other than fun descriptors?
I don’t want to try to unpack the notes of this fragrance as one would unpack their valise in Room 237 because I am enjoying it too much to overthink it. Room 237 is a must for lovers of opoponax. It smells new, which is saying something in this overcrowded territory in which niche must provoke in order to get attention and mainstream must do the exact opposite. Room 237 is compelling, sexy, sizzling, and probably challenging for the deadened noses of the mall misbegotten. I happen to love it; it slides back and forth between peculiarity and familiarity. The beginning is sharp and confrontational with the herbal tones, but by the drydown the herbs have smoothed out beautifully to reach beyond the film scene that inspired it–and it isn’t soapy in the least on me, nor particularly reminiscent of hotel rooms or of cleansing rituals. Room 237 isn’t mainstream, but it also is more wearable than the concept would imply. It’s playing a role with an ironic wink. Give it a try and see if it isn’t one of the more interesting–and fun–releases of 2015.
bigtipica – :
I’ve only tried this and Lampblack from Mr Fazzolari thus far, but both are extremely unique and well made fragrances. This is definitely the stranger of the two, in concept and execution, but it’s not weird for the sake of being weird. It just takes a strange idea and makes it work.
First of all I am a huge Stanley Kubrick fan and The Shining is one of my favorite films of all time. I think its fairly obvious that the scene that takes place in Room 237’s bathroom is the inspiration for this fragrance.
Jack is walking hypnotically through the bedroom and into the bathroom. Theres an ethereal haze to everything as a woman slowly reveals herself from behind a shower curtain. She slowly emerges from the water as Jack stares on, entranced. The two approach each other, and begin to embrace. When Jack glances up after kissing her, he sees in the mirror behind them that the woman has become a decrepit, rotting elderly woman. The music swells as the ghost woman laughs, chasing off the disturbed Jack.
The shower curtain is here. It’s that strong, plasticky vinyl smell thats familiar in such a strange way. As is a slightly floral, soapy note, no doubt the woman’s bathwater. Theres even a bit of a clean muskiness, the woman’s fresh washed body. The overall fragrance has a hazy, clean warmth, like a bathroom after a long hot shower. But somewhere beneath all that there is something seriously strange. Some dark, smoky, dare I say moldy undercurrent. It throws a wrench in the fragrance in the best way possible. I totally understand why some people seem to have some difficulty enjoying this fragrance with the scene in mind.
It perfectly represents room 237, in the beginning the fragrance is entrancing, hypnotic, strange, yet weirdly inviting and seductive. The drydown shows a much more confusing, disturbing side…but it’s still appealing. Maybe that moldy darkness was there the whole time, just like Jack in the photograph at the end of the film. Room 237 (the fragrance) captures the hypnotic, alluring insanity that Kubrick’s film mastered.
From a technical standpoint, I commend Fazzolari for using a plastic/vinyl accord outside the realm of “hyper-modern” “industrial” CDG-esque future scents or the Demeter/Brosius world of photorealism. It is truly art, embracing the evocative and unpleasant in order to create a new experience for the wearer.
8/10
MARTIN30A – :
Searing woods, rough ouds, tarry incenses. The overtly tough perfumes get most of the attention in the discussion of ‘challenging’ perfumes. Grim, dense, basenote-heavy perfumes are assumed to be threatening. Within the perfume fraternity they land somewhere between a hazing ritual and a hot-pepper eating contest. They have an aura of intimidation and tests of manhood, but conceptually they are as menacing as someone jumping out at you and yelling, “BOO!”
Room 237’s challenge is less overt. It’s not a dare, it’s a threat.
The perfume’s name is a reference to a specific scene and set from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The scene is horrifying for the way it creates suspense, for the way evil is revealed. It doesn’t confront you. It invites you, it lures you. It’s banal and common and you only become aware of it because you are becoming part of it. Whether you knew it or not, sin surrounds you and always has. Having peeled back the curtain and seeing the evil, there’s no turning back.
It’s a great spin on the tree of knowledge myth. Temptation, the internalization of evil, the fall from grace. So how can a perfume be ‘about’ these concepts? Room 237 works with discord smartly and delicately. The scent does evoke bathroom rituals. It suggests an enclosed space, moist air, human skin. It even borrows the form of the musky eau de cologne that often completes the bathing ritual. Perfumes have used materials like musks and costus to depict cleanliness against a backdrop of human animalism (eg. Eau d’Hermès, YSL Kouros, Miller Harris l’Air de Rien.)
Room 237 tweaks the juxtaposition, suggesting not a steamy bath, but the lingering moments after, where condensation on cold porcelain and plastic refute the humanity of the scenario. Cleansing and grooming should leave one at the height of freshness, so why is the setting so disturbing? Why does warm skin shiver? Is it a chill or the touch of something wicked? The incongruities, the inappropriateness might be at the far corner of your attention, just past the periphery, but you can sense them and they’re not going away.
Sinister and just a bit seductive.
from scenthurdle.com
adulaPloffMal – :
If Guerlain Mitsouko (which I loathe) and Oriza Legrand Chypre Mousse (which I like) were to somehow spawn a child, this would be it. I wanted to try it because the name and legend of it were just too much to resist. Let’s see: notes of vinyl shower curtain, peculiar flowers…well, the vinyl shower curtain is the malevolent entity here and steals the show. Peculiar flowers? I believe I smell decayed carnations. And there is a harsh, bloody metallic note which is entirely appropriate for what BF seeks to accomplish, which is to evoke the atmosphere of the murder room in The Shining. In spite of all this, it is not as shocking as I imagined it might be and I am not sure why there was any need to create such a thing as this. I dislike it, would never wear it anywhere out in public nor alone at home. Not a lot of sillage but boy does it have staying power – after an hour I could not take it anymore and washed with dish soap, then apple cider vinegar (which allegedly neutralizes odors), then dish soap again. It stubbornly refused to completely disappear, and was still faint on my arm when I awoke this morning, by which point it had become tolerable if not loveable. By no means a safe blind buy. I am glad I tried it though!
Ordering the sample from BF’s website was easy as pie. It shipped quickly and arrived about four days after I ordered it.
Wolfe – :
This fragrance achieves its mark: it smells like an old hotel that was updated with middling-grade materials in the 1970s. Vinyl is definitely in the mix, as is soap. There’s a vague musky weirdness to this, almost as though this was a broader fragrance that lost all its attractiveness once the tiny molecules flew away early in the mix, leaving a big, clunky base in the middle of the floor. It’s a pedestal with no statue, maybe? It’s not my cup of tea, but since I’m a Kubrick fan, I HAD to give it a go. It’s an oddity, and I’m glad I’ve smelled it, but I’m not intrigued. I vastly prefer Fazzolari’s Lampblack.
evruha-14 – :
smells exactly like a dude I used to fuck who wore l’homme by ysl religiously.
pedestrian at best.
fr199 – :
Last April, I was introduced to Lampblack—one of the finalists at the inaugural Institute for Art and Olfaction awards. Out of all the fragrances I tried that day, Lampblack was the one that lodged itself in my brain, and as many of you now know, it has since gone on to garner some serious acclaim. The other scents in Fazzolari’s line veer away from Lampblack’s modern lines, heading more toward classical and vintage aesthetics, each with a twist of its own. I’d suggest that Room 237 is more proximate to Lampblack because of its abstract nature, but whereas I feel comfortable suggesting Lampblack as a blind buy to almost anyone due to its versatility, Room 237 is quite different. In fact, it’ll probably go down as one of the strangest scents of 2015.
As I’m sure most of you are aware, Room 237 refers to the room in Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining where some seriously bad stuff happens. It’s an apt title as the scent comes off as marginally disturbing and is therefore one I wouldn’t be as comfortable suggesting for purchase unsniffed. I would, however, recommend a good, extensive sampling of it to see if it’s for you. I tried it a few times on my wrist at first, but it wasn’t until I gave it a full wear that I was able to get a good grasp on it.
For as unnerving and weird as it is, it’s not weird for weird’s sake — nor is it particularly challenging. There’s something about it that’s unhinged, but it manages to hold itself together and doesn’t come completely off the rails. It was designed to smell comparable to a freshly cleaned bathroom, and it accomplishes this rather well. The most salient description I could give of it is that it replicates the smell of steam. It seems to achieve this through an accord that smells like chewing gum, one that smells a touch soapy, one that smells a bit like a vintage masculine aromatic, and one that smells rooty and metallic. The initial effect is mildly chilly in a herbal/camphor kind of way, but it somehow also seems warm as if it’s billowing up around you due to a faintly balsamic base. This chilly / warm combination triggers cognitive dissonance, and there’s a discomforting musky skin effect stemming from a costus note that’s pressed up against oppoponax — a material that can smell similar to rubbery Band Aids. Combined, they create a waxy, plastic kind of sensation. The actual notes include angelica, flea bane, estragon, costus, oppoponax, and olibanum, but clean, warm, musky, and a bit damp would be my keywords.
Now, some of those images above are probably making it sound more challenging than it is as the impressions it triggers are quite reserved — they’re hints, really. In fact, my initial thought was that it was borderline ugly but oddly addictive at the same time. The overall effect is a cross between steam and an ‘80s-style green aromatic. It’s a bit like a mash-up of Byredo’s M/Mink (the inky plastic), Miller Harris’ L’Air de Rien (the musky skin), Phoenicia’s Skin Graft (the rubbery vinyl), and Lush’s Dirty (the fresh, clean herbs). Each one of those scents has its own peculiar characteristics, and they’re combined here — not as a sum total, but more as a tasteful collage. For as unnerving as this scent is, its weirdness is kept at a reserved level. I’d situate it as a clean scent for people who dislike clean scents — a fresh, soapy kind of thing that feels as if it might collapse at any minute and reveal something monstrous. It doesn’t, but that tension’s always there.
It wears strangely as well. At first it’s powerfully soapy, but it settles into a sort of clean, auratic bubble within minutes. It’s clearly powered by a base that merges resins with synthetics, not that you can smell anything obvious protruding from the blend, but because it demonstrates the kind of hide-and-seek elevation that such chemicals can deliver. It comes at you in wafts and occasionally balloons up around you (it’s fairly heat-sensitive), but for the most part, it sits close the skin and is quite polite. What makes it work so well for me, though, is that it never goes too soapy, nor does the costus take it down any overly-obvious metallic/scalp paths (which I find to be a flaw in L’Air de Rien). It manages to feel comfortable and relaxed, and although the idea of a “signature scent” is insane to me, I could imagine a person smelling like this all the time and having it become a distinguishable part of his or her character. It’s a scent that I could wear without having to plan my day around it or without worrying that it’s going to be somehow inappropriate, but it still has enough textural interest and seeming unpredictability to make it a tad more audacious.
I really like this scent, perhaps not as much as Lampblack, but I appreciate it for different reasons. Even though it draws associations to some of the weirder fragrances of the last ten years, I find that it works better than each of them as it walks a fine line between evocative and wearable. And that’s the other reason I like it so much: the way that it wears — a billowing, bubble of comfy, almost musk-like cleanliness. The truth is that this is not going to be for everyone — and it certainly wouldn’t fly in a commercial setting — but I think it’s a scent that the more devoted fragrance fans will appreciate and get a kick out of. The most disturbing aspects of it are more psychological than anything and they’re somewhat veiled within the scent, but the veil that covers them is fairly thin which is precisely what’s responsible for maintaining the scent’s tension.