Roja Dove is an English perfumer whose high-end fragrances are distributed solely to a small number of luxury department stores worldwide. His credentials are impeccable, having worked for luxury French fragrance houses for 20 years, before launching Roja Parfums in 2011. Dove is a respected Master Perfumer who can identify 800 scents blindfolded.
The brand-new Elysium is a fragrance with the boldest of aspirations: “The idea of paradise has fascinated people since the beginning of time,” says Dove. “One of the oldest names for it was Elysium — a place for heroes. This creation transports you to your Elysium — your personal paradise.
The fragrance is at once fresh and complex. Top notes include lemon, bergamot, grapefruit, lime and lavender, which burst to life, before giving way to the heart notes of thyme, artemisia, lily of the valley, rose de mai, jasmin de grasse, apple and blackcurrant. It then settles into the richer base notes of galbanum, pink pepper, cypriol, vetiver, cedarwood, juniper berry, benzoin, leather, ambergris and musk.
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Dove says of this combination: “Most houses tend to have a much more masculine or a much more feminine bias. I wanted to create a very unusual scent. One which was at once light and very fresh but at the same time extremely sexy.”
The bottle is not unusual in shape, though it’s still an extraordinary vessel. The graduated blue glass effect with gold print is hand-polished three times, a process normally reserved for crystal. Dove says this “makes it very silken, pure and flawless right down to the base, which is exactly the idea of Elysium.”
His final word on the scent is: “If you combine modernity while respecting tradition, you have something that is timeless, which is what I have always hoped Roja Parfums will be.”
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