J.F. Schwarzlose Berlin
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
That Turkish rose hits immediately, all jammy petals and a peppery bite, but within minutes the absinthe's bitter, anise-tinged green cuts through like crushed fennel and wormwood. The spices reveal themselves as dry and smoky rather than warm—closer to frankincense than cinnamon—creating an almost liturgical haze around the rose.
The labdanum cistus begins its slow amber crawl, adding a leathery, honeyed resin that makes the rose feel preserved in something ancient and sticky. Indolic white flowers emerge (perhaps tuberose or orange blossom), their heady sweetness battling the absinthe's medicinal edge, creating that trance-like oscillation between beautiful and unsettling.
The rose recedes into memory whilst the labdanum and woody notes dominate, leaving a skin-close trail of dusty amber and faded incense. What remains is resinous, slightly animalic, and surprisingly intimate—like the inside of a wooden box that once held dried petals and now holds only their ghost.
Trance pulls off something genuinely unusual: it makes Turkish rose feel unsettling rather than romantic. Véronique Nyberg has crafted a narcotic floral that leans heavily into the anisic bitterness of absinthe and the leathery, honeyed resin of cistus labdanum, creating a rose that feels less like a garden and more like a séance. The opening is deceptively pretty—that Turkish rose arrives with all its jammy, slightly peppery character intact—but the spice accord underneath has a dusty, incense-like quality that prevents any sweetness from settling into comfort. This isn't about soliflore elegance; it's about disorientation, about rose as an hallucinogenic rather than a crowd-pleaser.
The labdanum provides a sticky, amber-adjacent warmth that catches the rose petals mid-fall and suspends them in something viscous and strange. There's an almost medicinal edge from the absinthe, that green, bitter wormwood note cutting through the floral density like fennel seeds crushed between teeth. The 'blossoms' listed in the heart remain mysterious—perhaps orange flower, perhaps something more indolic—but they add a heady, swooning quality that justifies the name entirely. This is for those who find straight rose compositions too literal, who want their florals bruised and psychotropic. Wear it when you're feeling theatrical, when you want your presence to linger like smoke in a velvet-curtained room. It's unisex in the truest sense: challenging, confident, and entirely unbothered by convention.
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4.0/5 (105)