Retro: Jean Charles Brosseau Ombre Rose Parfum
Year Introduced: 1981 - Feminine
Notes: Top notes of rosewood, honey, ylang-ylang and peach; middle notes of rose, lily and iris; and base notes of musk, coumarin, vanilla and sandalwood (from Michael Edwards' French Feminine Fragrances) and Top notes of aldehydes, rosewood and geranium; middle notes of rose, sandalwood, orris, lily of the valley, cedarwood and vetiver; and base notes of vanilla, musk, tonka, cinnamon and heliotrope (from Haarmann & Reimer)
Created by Francoise Caron, Ombre Rose is one of the fragrances from the last 100 years that Roja Dove believes to be a true classic of its decade.
According to Brosseau's website, Ombre Rose is a simple, understated and timeless fragrance that smoothly passes through ages. Two generations have already been using it for 30 years. Its initial flowery, sweet tones of iris, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang and honey, give way to the suave warmth of peach, sandalwood and musk. (I'm sure this refers to the current formulation of their fragrance which I'm assuming differs from their vintage fragrance.)
An excerpt from a review on Yesterday's Perfume:
Ombre Rose can be translated literally as “pink shadow” or figuratively as a rose’s shadow. Both readings suggest that the rose scent in this Françoise Caron-composed perfume will be softened, and we will smell its shadow rather than rose straight on. Shadows cast darkness over things, shrouding them and making them mysterious and maybe even sinister. But pink shadows? Not exactly intimidating!
A perfect name, really, for what you’ll find inside. The rose in Ombre Rose is, in fact, shadowed by peach, orris, coumarin, musk, heliotrope, vanilla, and sandalwood, turning it into something at once powdery, gourmand, spicy, and woody. (It’s characterized as an aldehydic floral, but it seems more like a Floriental to me.) You can smell its influence on Loulou — minus the incense — but Ombre Rose has some crackle in addition to its sweet, soft, and confectionary simplicity. Its spicy, musky, and woody drydown is near-intoxicating.
To me, Ombre Rose is a comfort scent. It got its start as an old Roure perfume base with a cosmetic note that smelled like vintage face powder. From there, Françoise Caron gave it a huge dose of coumarin (along with vanillin) to create a praline note. To me, this makes Ombre Rose nostalgic and gourmand rather than sexy. (In fact, perfumer Pierre Bourdon goes so far as to say that Ombre Rose is probably the first gourmand scent that was ever created.)
Ombre Rose is still be sold but it is sold as Ombre Rose l'Original.
We are decanting from an unopened, boxed bottle of the original parfum version of this fragrance.
