In 1964 the breeders Swim & Weeks raised Mister Lincoln, a crimson hybrid tea that HelpMeFind lists with a strong fragrance. The best rose perfume smells like that garden rose, not a powder compact: choose one whose supporting notes are green or spicy rather than violet and orris.
Roses turn up in at least 75% of contemporary women's fragrances, by The Perfume Society's count, so the flower alone tells you very little. What changes from bottle to bottle is the company the rose keeps.
Where the powder in a vintage rose comes from
Powder is usually what makes a rose read as old-fashioned, and it comes from violet and orris sitting under the flower.
Violet notes in perfume are built largely from ionones. Alpha-ionone went into Roger & Gallet's Vera Violetta in the 1890s, and ScenTree's material sheet says perfumers still add it to violet and rose accords "for a floral-fruity and powdery facet". The Perfume Society calls violet powdery and romantic, a little like iris, and notes that ionones have been worked into almost every perfume worn today.
Orris, the aged root of the iris, adds more of the same. It smells powdery and suede-like, "rather like violets", its rhizomes take three or four years to mature, and it is prized as a fixative (The Perfume Society on orris). A rose laid over violet and orris lasts well and smells of face powder and lipstick.
Plenty of people love exactly that. If you don't, those two words on a notes list are the first thing to look for.
Is rose otto or rose absolute fresher?
Rose otto usually smells fresher: steam distillation keeps more geraniol, while rose absolute is dominated by the fuller, softer phenyl ethyl alcohol. Rose otto is steam-distilled; rose absolute is pulled from the flowers with solvents or CO2 (The Perfume Society). The method decides what ends up in the bottle.
The clearest difference is phenyl ethyl alcohol, a soft, rosy heart material. According to ScenTree, it makes up 60–80% of a damask rose absolute but only about 3% of damask rose oil, because it dissolves into the water in the still and is lost. Geraniol runs the other way: 15–22% of Bulgarian rose oil against 3–5% of the absolute, and ScenTree credits it with the "fresh and rosy facet" that brightens a head note.
So a label that names rose otto, or Bulgarian or Turkish rose oil, points to a rose with more of geraniol's fresh edge. One that names rose absolute or Rosa centifolia points to a rose built on phenyl ethyl alcohol, fuller in the heart. Neither extract is the old-fashioned one by itself; either can be buried in powder. Both are scarce. The Perfume Society says it is thought to take about 170 damask roses to make a single drop of oil, and around 70% of the world's rose oil comes from Bulgaria.
Choosing the best rose perfume by its notes
A rose stays modern when the notes around it smell of the living plant, such as a cut stem or a leaf. The table below sorts common notes-list words by the direction they push a rose.
| On the notes list | What it does to the rose | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Violet, iris, orris | Powdery, soft, cosmetic | ScenTree, The Perfume Society |
| Rose absolute, centifolia | Fuller heart, mostly phenyl ethyl alcohol | ScenTree |
| Rose otto, Bulgarian or Turkish rose | More geraniol, a fresher rosy top | ScenTree |
| Green stem, leaves, geranium | A cut-stem freshness | ScenTree |
| Lychee, red fruits | Fruity lift | ScenTree |
| Clove, myrrh | Warm, spicy rose | The Perfume Society |
Rose oxide is the molecule behind two of those rows. Found naturally in damask rose oil, it is used in rose reconstructions "to bring the greeny flower stem note" and to enhance lychee and red-fruit notes, per ScenTree's entry on rose oxide. When a brand lists "rose stem", "green leaves" or "lychee", something like it is usually doing the work.
How should you test a rose perfume before buying?
Skin, not paper, shows you where the rose ends up. Spray one wrist. Wait at least an hour, then smell it again. Powder often arrives late, once the fresher top notes have gone, so a rose that seemed green at the counter can dry down soft and dusty.
Test two roses on separate wrists rather than several on strips, and ask for the notes list for each. A sample or a small bottle is the cheaper way to live with a scent for a few days. We sell Big Red in a 0.5 oz spray for $25, and a set of all four of our fragrances lets you compare Big Red with the others at home.
Big Red, and the rose it follows
Big Red, the rose in our range, is built to smell like the Mister Lincoln rose in bloom, deep crimson and warm from the sun. We don't publish a full notes list for it; we describe it as velvety and spicy, and it is neither a powdery rose nor a candy-sweet one. We bottle it in two spray sizes, 0.5 oz and 1.5 oz.
Mister Lincoln's seed parent has its own California story. Chrysler Imperial was bred by Walter Lammerts in 1952, and he appears in our history of the roses California gave the world. As a gift, the rose gift flight pairs Big Red with a matching candle under glass and four rose lip balms.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash.
