Délire de Roses
Caron (2011)

Imagine yourself in the peaceful, scientific era of gunpowder and inventions, you simply aren't interested in any future wars, and you find yourself at a village, happily relaxing on a hill, looking out across the sea. Women are working in their gardens just yards away, tending to their flowers and singing over light gusts of wind, picking fresh lychee from their trees. You're charmed as a young girl walks up the hill and offers you some of the fresh fruit with a bouquet of rose, and you smile, breathe in, absorb the serenity, and wonder if you're finally home. It's Délire de Roses.

I've always appreciated rose for its ability to be both dewy and green, young and classic. It's a shape shifter that easily takes on new personalities. This perfume, being stuffed to the brim with rose is no exception. Great mixture of floral notes represented with beautiful rose and litchi. So soft, well balanced and gentle. Délire de Roses to me is a synonyme for genuine rose, nothing synthetic or false can be found in this one. With that said, I can imagine this being a great scent for a tropical climate, or for someone who doesn’t appreciate a loud scent. I have to add that it creates a soft, delicate scent bubble around you that others seem to enjoy.

Initially this is a nice rose. A bit two-dimensional without much nice, quite bright and positive. It is accompanied by the aroma of green leaves and a touch of jasmine in the background.

After about nearly an hour the rise collapses and retreats into the background until the end, with the green side growing and with whiffs of a nonspecific fruitiness presents at times too. Soon a bright and slightly sweet powdery note developed and moves into the foreground rather quickly. This green powdery impression remains dominant until the end.

I get moderate sillage, adequate projection and seven hours of longevity, the last three hours very close to my skin.

This spring scent's eponymous rose core is quite agreeable, but the second half is not really convincing. It is all a bit too monochrome and too generic. 2.75/5.

At first sniff, this is a decent rose perfume. The roses are topped with that peach that's in everything (they can call it lychee all they want...) and sits on a subtle green aquatic cushion while plasticky hairspray aldehydes mix with dark honey.

Within a fairly short time, the stars of the show turn out to be the plastic and honey, creating a weird, dark fusion of waxy artificiality that I find vaguely interesting but not really appealing at all.

There are so many rose perfumes out there, and many of them are better than this, so I have to go with a neutral vote...

Green fresh rose, nice scent

The first burst is that of a subtle, powdery rose, supported by tuberose, even though the latter is not mentioned by Caron as being part of its make-up. There are green notes that are very fresh, not at all bitter, as well.

The notes are rose petals, rose leaves, lotus flower, lily of the valley, lychee, jasmine.

The jasmine acts as a support for the rose and lychee to float upon.

It didn't have longetivity on my skin, but was quite lovely for the two hours it did last. What I liked most about it was it did not blast rose at me, as so many rose based or rose named scents do. The effect is very light, very subtle.

Searching for a rose scent to replace my beloved, now discontinued, Caron Rose, I eagerly tore open my sample of Delir de Roses. The saleslady at the Paris boutique had assured me over the phone that it was "really pretty". Perhaps to some it is. But I'm gobsmacked at how this great fragrance house could produce such a mediocre offering of its most celebrated perfume note, the rose.
IFRA 43 strikes again!
This regulation forbids, among other things, high concentrations of rose notes because of some "health concern" - despite the fact that people have worn rose scents for hundreds of years, and aromatherapists use rose essential oil for promoting wellbeing. But IFRA knows best. So Caron cannot make its Rose any longer, and has come up with this substitute.
Delir de Roses starts out pleasantly enough, with green notes of lily of the valley and something citrussy accompanying an initial waft of real rose. In a store, perhaps this would be enough to sell the perfume. But after ten minutes or so it goes downhill. The usual dreary "fruity gourmand" cliche is dragged out - this time, lychee - and after that a peculiar dried hay and honey accord develops and lasts for a couple of hours. And that's it.
You've gone for a delightful walk in a pretty cottage garden in June, only to find the alluring path ends abruptly in the farmer's barn!