Ambrosine (Francesca Dell'Oro Parfum)

During fairs -but also in shops- I never resolved to test "Francesca Dell'Oro" line (website here).  
For me, the word "gold" (Dell'Oro means Golden) placed near any product indicates a poor thing, which by any other name would not sell; the marketing geniuses associate it to "gold" to be sure that at least the most stupid consumers will buy it.
I then added gold to the fact that perfumes are bottled in expensive containers, and that presentation includes silk handkerchiefs and perfume cloche of bizarre shapes, and so I run away before sniffing anything.
I was wrong. When I took time to meet Francesca, I found a real perfume aficionado. Francesca  knows perfumery well, and having also a marketing degree she knows how to make the most of what she does. Her main focus, however, is always on perfumes: speaking to one of the perfumers behind her fragrances I discovered she was greatly committed in the olfactory composition, too, which had to be exactly as she had imagined. 
"Ok", I thought: "Beautiful or ugly, her perfumes won't certainly be trivial: she would never allow it."
And I started to smell.
I will add more reviews in the following weeks, but I'll start with the fragrance that striked me the most: Ambrosine, a soft and sensual amber that surprised me for originality. 
First, it is not dominated by notes of cistus labdanum or civettone (a synthetic civet), which generally I like but I also get tired of quite soon. Cistus is replaced with a nice dose of Ambrox, a synthetic note possessing a velvety, musky touch, plus a serene "woodiness", plus the animality of civet, all in the same molecule. Surely, using Ambrox in an amber scent would not qualify it as original, but instead this is; maybe the other notes around it make the real difference. Soft, warm, gentle, slightly animal, Ambrox links well with tonka bean, contributing a powdery dry down, enriched by a plastic rose note, almost siliconic, whose weirdness would be out of place elsewhere but is just perfect here
Consisting mainly of warm, heavy raw materials Ambrosine does not change much during time, remaining gently stable on skin for hours -for days, on fabrics- wrapping the wearer and their clothes in a wonderful fragrant cloud. I recommend you to try on skin, because on paper it remains cold, one-dimensional.
All in all, while fitting into the Amber category, Ambrosine deserves a place of its own, different from the others:  I fell in love with it mainly because it is not easy to build an original amber today, especially if your formula is short, and dominated by a popular synthetic.
My compliments to you, Francesca!

ps
(Yes, yes, I then realized that "Dell'Oro" is just Francesca's surname and she can't change it only to please me… )

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