Countess Olenska {a Victorian, Yellow Rose perfume :: 3 Roses Collection}

Description

Inspired by the enigmatically beautiful Countess Olenska, from Edith Wharton’s classic “The Age of Innocence”… this is a beautiful yellow rose perfume in what I imagine to be the “Victorian Style”.  I used these specific passages from the book to give a detailed picture of the feeling I was going for:  “What he saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded shadowy charm of a room unlike any room he had known. He knew that the Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her–bits of wreckage, she called them–and these, he supposed, were represented by some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze on the chimney-piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the discoloured wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in old frames”.   …   “He tried to analyze the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and tables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot roses (of which nobody ever bought less than a dozen) had been placed in the slender vase at his elbow, and in the vague pervading perfume that was not what one put on handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some far-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish coffee and ambergris and dried roses”.

I grow yellow roses in my own garden and one that I used to model the centerpiece accord was the “Harrison’s Yellow” – a self hybridized yellow bush rose that originated from the mid 19th Century in New York City.  I love this particular rose… and I felt that the fact that it came from Victorian New York was a perfect fit for Countess Olenska.

* there are 2 limited edition bottles: the 10 ml travel spray has a beautiful floral / filigree design and the special 50 ml beveled edge slender bottle are new for this collection.