Valentino
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The truffle arrives first—earthy, slightly fungal, minerally damp—colliding with bright bergamot in a combination that shouldn't work but does. There's an initial oddness, a savoury quality that makes you pause and reconsider what you thought you knew about floral fragrances. The effect is arresting, almost unsettling, like discovering chanterelles growing beneath rose bushes.
Tuberose takes centre stage now, creamy and full but never quite losing that peculiar truffle undercurrent that keeps everything from sliding into conventional territory. The strawberry reads as tart-sweet, adding a jammy fruited quality that softens the white floral intensity, whilst orange blossom and jasmine weave through in impressionistic strokes. This is the fragrance's most generous phase, all voluptuous petals and skin-warmed sweetness, yet still retaining an edge of sophistication.
The florals fade to a powdery whisper, leaving amber and cedar to create a second-skin warmth that feels quietly elegant. There's a vintage quality here—talc and wood and golden resin—that recalls the great floral compositions of the 1950s, but rendered with restraint. What remains is intimate, close to the skin, a musky-floral haze with the faintest ghost of that opening truffle providing depth.
Valentina opens with an audacious gambit: white Alba truffle mingling with Calabrian bergamot, creating an earthy-citrus tension that immediately announces this isn't your standard floral. The truffle lends a peculiar, almost savoury umami quality—damp forest floor and mineral richness—that stops the bergamot from skating into predictable territory. As the composition unfolds, the tuberose emerges with full-bodied creaminess, but Morillas has cleverly tempered its usual rubber-and-petrol tendencies with woodland strawberry, a stroke that adds a tart, jammy sweetness without tipping into gourmand excess. The orange blossom and jasmine provide classical white floral architecture, yet they're rendered in soft focus, almost gauzy, allowing that curious truffle note to peek through intermittently like an expensive secret.
What strikes most is the powdery drydown—amber and cedar create a skin-like warmth that feels both vintage and modern, recalling the great floral aldehydics of decades past whilst maintaining contemporary wearability. This is a fragrance for someone who appreciates the juxtaposition of refined florals against something deliberately strange, who wants their tuberose served with a side of the unexpected. It's the scent of a woman who wears silk shirts with tailored trousers to gallery openings, who appreciates the tension between polished and wild. Valentina doesn't shout; it murmurs in cultured tones with the occasional earthy aside, and therein lies its considerable charm. It's unabashedly feminine without being saccharine, sophisticated without stuffiness.
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3.5/5 (121)