Description
A deep and velvety true rose soliflore that evokes a fresh-picked garden rose. Damask rose accented by soft supporting notes of fresh bergamot and violet leaf, subtle carnation, woodsy musk, and a whisper of patchouli.
Perfumer’s Comments: I can’t resist the scent of a lush rose in full bloom. Some of my favorites for their fragrance are David Austin’s Shakespeare 2000 and Abraham Darby; the Bulgarian perfume rose Kazanlik; the old roses Fantin Latour, Souv. de Claudius Denoyel, and Madame Alfred Carrier; and the modern roses Mr. Lincoln, Angel Face, and Double Delight. Some roses have hints of citrus, spice, myrrh, or tea in their scent, and the wide variety is fun to experience. I wanted Velvet Rose to be a soliflore that wasn’t honeyed or vanillic, that had just a touch of green, and that captured some of the dewy freshness that makes roses special to rose lovers. I also wanted a formula that would do well in lotion and oil form.
Fragrance Notes: Damask rose, bergamot, carnation, violet leaf, musk, patchouli.
The fragrance was created by Laurie Erickson in December 2007.
Evimaseva – :
One of the crown jewels of rose perfumes! Lush, vivid rose with impressive intensity. Has a spicy clean accord that supports and compliments, but doesn’t intrude. I love this quality because the splendor and beauty of the rose isn’t infringed upon. It is rather put in a jewel setting to amplify its’ brilliance. Natural lushness of a big rose in its’ prime, perfect sillage and longevity is all day!
Xeroxhitke – :
I wanted a rose perfume that would smell like sticking your nose into Chrysler Imperial or another of the big, red, smelly hybrid teas when it’s at the peak of its bloom. Thick and intoxicating, sensual and rich. No soap, no makeup, no “old lady.” Just sexy roses.
Enter Velvet Rose. Oh heaven. First application I sat wreathed in the smell of a rose garden in the dewy morning it just settled around me, the rich scent of hybrid tea at the edge of my senses, oddly, sniffing my wrist where I’d applied the sample just gave me a sharp nose full of alcohol for the first ten minutes or so, but still the hovering scent… Within 10 to 15 minutes on my skin everything but clean dewy rose evaporates and I’m utterly transported. It *still* had me smelling roses after I’d spent an hour grooming, and working a nervous, muddy horse. Now that’s impressive.
I will be buying the biggest bottle of this they have, I may never need another scent.
(Note: Others have mentioned patchouli. I HATE patchouli, it makes me gag but I smell none here. Just rose. That may be my body chemistry or my nose. Normally I see reviews say patchouli and just strike that perfume off my list. So you may or may not experience patchouli in this, I don’t.)
SDren – :
After trying a sample of this I bought a full bottle, and I didn’t even think I was looking for a rose fragrance. On my skin it began as a fresh, deep, dark, dewy rose. This progressed over the course of say 4 hours into a warmer, thicker, bees-waxy rose, with swirls of spice and a slightly mossy/earthy base. By 8 hours it was a sublime creamy, turkish delighty thing that radiated beautifully. It felt elegant, natural and incredibly soothing. I should add that it’s the only floral perfume I own that I enjoy wearing during the depths of Winter.
I got three independent compliments on this, and I very rarely get compliments on my niche perfumes.
My sister smelt it and said it smells like a ‘woman’ and like ‘warm skin’. A woman at the swimming pool thought it was my shampoo and asked for the name.
I think people like it because it smells so natural and well blended. I find SSS fragrances a joy to wear because they never go synthetic on me.
Longevity is incredible for me…12 hours as a minimum. In fact I tend to dab rather than spray to control it.
10/10
eoesyio2 – :
Lovely clean, full, rich red rose scent, which is very strong and luscious on spraying.
Bonus: it doesn’t turn sour at all, unlike the similar but sadly sour/stale Jo Malone red roses.
However it also doesn’t last very long (less than two hours on my skin), which is sad for a scent which is so lovely in virtually every other way.
It quickly fades to a very soft patchouli with the faintest whiff of mild (bulgarian?) rose, and this skin scent has several hours more longevity, but at an extremely modest, low-projection level.
GROUND – :
Sonoma Scent Studio Velvet Rose vs Perfumers Workshop Tea Rose
With one on each arm they both had the same rose base smell when I first put them on. Then I went out for the day and began my smell test. This is the results 2 hours later.
SSS VR: This smells like a bed of fresh rose pedals. It goes on much softer than PWTR, and has a moderate silage. It is soft and velvety yet lasts for hours. I think anyone can wear this; young, old, and anyone in between. There is no “old lady” smell here. It’s gorgeous by itself or layered.
PW TR: This goes on with the smell of fresh cut roses from the garden including the sharpness of freshly cut stems which remain at the forefront of the scent, sometimes even overpowering the rose. This has medium to heavy silage and lasts for hours. In my opinion, the sharp stem smell is great for that feminine soul who stands out in a crowd.
Both are straight forward tea rose scents, both are beautiful, but do you like pedals or stems? You decide.
qik536bedyWelty – :
Those two reviews at the very bottom here are both GREAT reviews in terms of explaining this scent. But why, oh, why do both of you even mention “old lady” smell or lack thereof? Sure, you say this scent isn´t that, but that implies that there IS such a thing! STOP evoking that vibe altogether, please! I mean, firstly why would “old lady” smell bad? Secondly WHO is an “old lady”? Thirdly, we ALL will be “old lady” sooner or later- will be start smelling a certain way then or choose “old lady” fragrances? I just wish EVERYONE would STOP this as of yesterday! No scents smell “old lady” and if they DO it surely isn´t BAD! Is it? In that case, please explain why it is bad or why certain people may find it objectionable, but STOP using that expression EVEN like this, in a negating way because there ISN´T AN OLD LADY SMELL to be negated! Also, I have heard this ridiculous expression being used on such VERY different frags as E Taylor´s White Diamonds, Paloma Picassos Mon Parfum, Estees White Linen, Obsession, Rive Gauche, and Yves Saints Paris! It´s ridiculous.
woops – :
To my nose this is a clean, savoury kind of rose. It definitely says tea rose – so if you want opulence and lipstick or vintage bohemia it won’t satisfy. Like most tea roses I find it slightly too clean for my taste, but there’s a sense of true rose and it has subtle feminine elegance
Parkour – :
I love it. I don’t know what others mean by “jammy” when they describe rose perfumes, but after reading that term, I think this smells wonderfully like roses and a little like grape jam. It’s very summery. Makes me happy.
steewboronant – :
Every greenish rose perfume evokes immediately recollections of Perfumer’s Workshop TEA ROSE, and Sonoma Scent Studio VELVET ROSE is no exception to the rule. TEA ROSE is probably sharper and greener than VELVET ROSE, but the two are close neighbors on the grand olfactory map, much closer to one another than any of the other SSS rose perfumes are to each other or to TEA ROSE.
Don’t get me wrong: I like green rose perfumes, I really do, but I do kind of feel that if you’ve smelled one (good one) you’ve smelled them all. I only need one, and I already own TEA ROSE. But if anyone out there thinks that TEA ROSE is too low-brow because they practically give it away for free, by all means, buy yourself a niche green rose perfume! As for me, I’ll spend my niche bucks on something less readily available and hopefully unique!
aleks33301 – :
Imagery:
Early morning on what will soon become a hot summer day. A garden of David Austin old world roses are still damp with dew with the remnants of the evening’s dew. I think that surely heaven must smell like this.
Reality:
This fragrance returns that memory to me. I ordered a sample of Velvet Rose hoping to experience that memory with the first whiff. Most rose scents – in my very limited experience- are either too thin or too heavy. There is a line between “I am a confident woman who loves roses” and ” I am a lace-y, ruffled girlie girl who loves roses and cotton candy” that seems to be a difficult line to maneuver in fragrance. Velvet Rose is a lush, lasting scent that brought my memory home. I am Velvet Rose enthralled!
proectovnik – :
After I ran across a review of Velvet Rose I decided I needed to try it. I’ve always become intoxicated by the scent David Austin Roses and hoped to find something that would remind me of my former rose garden- just as it smelled early in the morning of what would become a hot day. Lush,blowzy roses with velvet soft petals and intoxicating fragrance. Most rose fragrances are either too thin or too overdone for my taste – too sweet,sticky and ruffled ‘girlie”. Velvet Rose captures the scent and the ‘feel’ of my rose garden. Rather than ruffled girl it screams confident rose lover! Amazingly too – it lasts. I used some last night and can still smell it this morning. For me – this is a memory scent and a very good one at that !
диня – :
Have you ever smelled Creed’s Fleurs de Bulgarie? Did you like the rose note? How about Luten’s Majeste La Rose, did the green tartness grab your attention? And what about Kurkdjian’s Lumierre noir pour femme and JHaG’s Lady Vengeance – did the rose/patch combo work for you?
Then run for this one, because this is what you’ll end up buying. This is now the fourth fragrance I’ve tried from this line and I can add another praise: it LASTS. I put the smallest dab on last night before bed, and 12 hours later (yes, I’m still in my pajamas), it is still here in full strength.
What’s left, though, is the medicinal high note of the patchouli (which I love, aka Lumierre noir), and a very high quality bulgarian rose. Bergamot and clove, other favorites of mine, really make this scent sparkle.
Sorry I can’t give a more poetic description, but when it comes to scents I actually want to buy I”m much more pragmatic. This is a keeper.
Demon3000 – :
Very unique rose fragrance that – I believe – not only rose scent lovers will appreciate. It’s so fresh and natural, that you just feel like sitting with your head in a rose bush wearing it. Yes, it does make me imagine not only rose flowers, but the whole plants, with leaves, stems and roots. It’s also very long lasting. Very good choice for spring and summer!
fah – :
Based on the recommendation of some posters over at “Now Smell This,” I ordered this one unsniffed. I’m still on the fence about it.
It opens with a waft of something greenish and bitter, almost medicinal, that lasts 5-10 minutes before flowing into big armfuls of luscious, dewy fresh roses. Yes, fresh roses — not rose attar, rose absolute, rose jam, or rose potpourri, as is so often the case in rose-focused fragrances. This phase lasts about 3 hours on me and is very, very attractive. Later, the patchouli begins to come through. It’s herby and green, not “head shop” patchouli, but this is one note that I particularly despise, and is the sole reason that I’m on the fence about loving this fragrance. I’ll suffer a lot for big armfuls of luscious roses, but I’m not sure I can continue to suffer the patchouli (described as “a hint” on the SSS website) on a regular basis. I seem to be particularly sensitive to patchouli, and most people aren’t. If you’re not bothered by it, Velvet Rose is a gorgeous choice.
Definitely not your “old lady” fragrance.
antonderberg – :
I asked a fellow perfumaholic for a sample of Sonoma Scent Studio ‘Vintage Rose’, but somewhere between here and Calgary our signals got crossed, and I ended up with ‘Velvet Rose’.
It’s a green rose, a ‘real’ rose’, a just-cut garden rose with the leaves and bitter stem still on. Very nice. I almost can’t smell the other elements here — that’s how smooth the composition is. But I said ‘almost’. There’s a carnation lurking somewhere! Definitely, though I don’t see the note listed.
I’ve realized that there are many people with otherwise great tastes in perfumes that simply hate rose fragrances (“smells like an old lady” they say), but as I go weak in the knees for rose, I’ve sampled a large number of the perfumes. SSS’s ‘Velvet Rose’ is a very nice one, and since I’m sampling the oil, lasts and lasts. If this smells like an ‘old lady’, then hey, I want to be that old lady!
Now to get my hands on that Vintage. . .