Fort & Manlé: Harem Rose

Last year, I fell in love terribly with Fort & Manlé’s Charlatan via sample. Chocolate, rose, pear, truffle…I have already mentioned all of the sweet, sweet pain of loving her, like the expensive courtesan she is.

Undaunted by that excursion, I recently ordered F & M’s discovery set; spray vials of all 10 of the Australian house’s scents. Knowing full well that if Charlatan was typical, I was going to fall in love with something beyond my usual pay grade, or possibly several such somethings.

Well. Speaking of expensive courtesans, I chose Harem Rose as my first sample to try. Its product description on Fort & Manlé’s site is a poem by Muhibbi, the pseudonym of Süleyman the Magnificent, to his beloved consort and later wife, the clever Ruthenian* redhead Hürrem. That sets something of a high expectation for the mood that is supposed to be evoked by this scent, doesn’t it? I mean, Hürrem was no ordinary harem occupant.

The listed notes appear rather straightforward: Amber, benzoin, vanilla, rose, cashmere woods, vetiver. Right, then. In simplicity lies beauty. Or something that could be modestly workmanlike, but nothing too memorable.

It’s the former: Harem Rose is glorious. It starts off with a rush of spice over rose. Clearly, there are notes not listed, as the spice is complex. Initially, it smelled clovelike, which gave me a few minutes of dismay; I’m allergic to clove. Fortunately, it wasn’t clove (I’d have known, anyway); it emerged as nutmeg and saffron notes. There was also a woody rather medicinal note, like cedar, lurking in the middle.

But the rose…let’s talk about this rose. It’s almost an old rose, a dried rose, but not quite. It’s not the fresh, dewy rose of the harem kızlar, the young women; this is the rose of the favorite. There’s nothing innocent about this one, really. It’s far, far too opulent for that.

After a few hours of wear, the woods recede. What remains is beautifully and deeply sweet, like rosewater, honey, and saffron over vanilla and aromatic wood. There are unplumbed depths to that sweetness. There’s a somewhat solemn, papery note, which I suspect is the effect of the benzoin, a vanilla-ish gum. And the vetiver, oh, the vetiver. On me, vetiver takes on a kind of industrial gun-oil quality. This can be good, or it can be dire. Here it is very good. It appears as a slightly metallic oil edge enhancing all the dry spicy sweetness. In an attempt to sum up the total effect, I wrote this elsewhere, which may or may not work for you (it may be something of a strained metaphor, although it is as faithful as I can get in description): “This is what it is: an old but still fragrant cedar box containing a dried rose wrapped in old paper which had been saturated at some point with a mixture of saffron, nutmeg, and benzoin, the edges of the rose’s petals singed lightly with the machine-oil scent of vetiver.” I’d go one better and say that the “paper” in question smells more than a bit like Papiers d’Armenie, the tear-off strips of benzoin-soaked paper one can burn as incense, before they’re burned, with a bit of added spice.

I’ve seen several reviews call this a “3-D rose scent,” which I get. It’s a scent skillfully composed of mixed media, artfully revealing all of these elements like different facets.

Ayuh, perhaps that’s a bit pretentious, is it? Sorry.

Harem Rose fades beautifully, just like roses themselves. It lingers for a very long time; wear is at least 12 hours on me. The sillage is not very big; it’s not a skin scent, but I think one doesn’t fragrance a room with it when one enters, unless one puts an immoderate amount on. Which I don’t. And I certainly don’t suggest it here; again this just is not a light, fresh, breezy scent**, and could be a real scentbomb if applied overenthusiastically.

As a comment, Fort & Manlé’s scents are generally unisex, though some skew more one way than the other. Unsurprisingly, Harem Rose skews feminine.

Harem Rose is not quite the swoon of wicked Charlatan for me, but she is very lovely indeed. Like the cunning Hürrem, she is a rose of many facets. I greatly enjoyed the introduction to her, and look forward to getting to know her better.

Meanwhile, I have several more scents to try from both Fort & Manlé and the assorted sample purchase…o calamity…

*Ruthenian = Russian? Ukrainian? Polish? It’s still up for debate what nationality can claim her.

** (in my opinion, and I was surprised to see any of those descriptors anywhere about this, but everyone’s got their own take.)