Roma
Fragrance notes
Character
Roma opens cold and green, mint cutting through Sicilian bergamot and pink grapefruit before black currant and a whisper of hyacinth drop in underneath, adding a dark fruit note and a faint green-floral sweetness. That citrus-mint bite is unusual for a fragrance built in 1988, and carnation and jasmine in the heart soften it only a little as the wear goes on, never quite erasing the sharpness of the opening.
The base is where Roma shows its age in the best sense: myrrh, oakmoss, patchouli and civet build a dense, resinous foundation that most modern florals wouldn't dare attempt, with vanilla and sandalwood keeping it warm rather than austere. Sillage sits as a small, close cloud, noticed by whoever is near enough to catch it, and the wear settles into a middling stretch on skin, neither brief nor especially long.
Roma suits someone drawn to old-school orientals with real civet and moss weight in the base, and will read strange to anyone wanting something clean or contemporary. The oakmoss and civet alone will be a hard sell for modern noses, but they give the fragrance a density most of today's orientals don't bother with.
Smells similar
Built from the same materials — ranked by how unusual the shared notes are, not by how many.
