Narciso Rouge Eau de Parfum
Narciso Rodriguez (2018)

Narciso Rouge is a elegant powdery lipsticky musky scent feels like stepping out in to a lanai for fresh air before a romantic night out. It is warm outside and the air is as weighty as velvet. The luscious aromas of the surrounding musky floral entrance you, while a waxy scent adds to the depth of the night. The humidity in the air moistens your skin and realeses the powdery fragrance of your body tale into the space around you.

You feel slightly dizzy with the anticipation of a social night and the pressure of the heady scents enveloping your body. You close your eyes and breathe in your personal mix of florals and powder and suddenly your dizzeness in replaced by a calm, pleasant mood. A smile creeps across your face just as your lover steps out to join you with a chilled,rum-based cocktail in their hand.

Narciso Eau de Parfum Rouge was created in 2018 by Nadege le Garlantezec and Sonia Constant, it showcases the soft, hal-clean, half-animalic, soft and alluring signature Narciso Rodriguez white musk over the vetiver and cedar base like all the Narciso cubes.

Here, more tonka is added to the base notes and rose and iris sit at the top. It's the heaviest, densest, dirtiest and muskiest of all the Narciso cubes to my nose, and the most intense. It's also a bit powdery, but not in a sweet and cuddly way the Poudree is, it's somehow... more aggressive. Red colour seems to suit it well. To me, the redness, aggression and powderiness of Narciso Rouge is somehow comparable to Guerlain's Habit Rouge.

It is a very good fragrance, but it's probably my least favourite Narciso cube, as I find it a bit overpowering and a bit too dirty-animalic to my taste. It is a bit easier to wear when you spray it, but as I have a dab bottle, I noticed it becomes much heavier and dirtier when dabbed – probably because the top notes are less pronounced. I overdo it and choke myself about every other time I wear it.

The Narciso Eau de Toilette Rouge came in the end of 2019 and has lily of the valley instead of iris, and therefore is much airier, prettier, more spring-like and easier on my nose than the EDP – because iris is not my favourite note as you might have already guessed.

Cosmetic-lipstick and sugary-poudree take on musky rose/iris and balmy/tonkinian notes. You can feel along the way various stages of musky soapiness (talky-sugary, milky, musky-neutral, balmy-woody and vaguely detergent). I don't catch the "rouge" side of the moon; this is white or "cream". Vetiver provides a touch of dry/airy woody freshness. Glamour-chic and vain mainstream creamy-floral Narciso's fragrance for a superficially "social, pseudo-cultural" metropolitan down town winter night.

Actrice dans sa Loge by Edouard Vuillard 1872