Stop and Smell the Roses (Please!)
IMAGE by Dingee & Conard Co.; Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection, “The New Guide to Rose Culture” (1881) Sourced by WikiCommons
July 17th, 2024
One of the unexpected joys of perfuming is the intimate connection you develop with the rose: not only the botanical material derived from the flowers, rose absolute, with its sweet, floral, almost human quality, but also the roses themselves.
In my decade-plus of perfuming, I have learned to stick my nose in every rose I pass on the street.
Though I'm not a gardener and can't distinguish one rose type from another by sight, there's immense pleasure in being able to identify a rose by her varied olfactory expressions: musky, fruity, resiny, green, floral, powdery, the list goes on.
When we smell rose absolute in classes that I teach - that spicy, honeyed extract of real roses used in natural perfumery - inevitably, someone says, “Wow, that is not how I thought rose smelled.” This is the perversion of rose that happens in fragrance culture. Whether it’s your grandmother’s rose powder, rose water, or any number of dirty rose perfumes being offered today, we have co-opted what is on its own a beautiful, complex, appealing, sometimes quirky, always thought-provoking scent.
And, while we often use roses to express love, to convey joy, friendship, and even grief, do we truly experience them? What would happen if we took a moment to smell every rose we passed by? As these flowers bloom everywhere over the next few weeks, I invite you to reconnect with her scent.
Quite literally, stop and smell the roses. Stop, smell, and appreciate the difference in each bloom. I promise you'll be amazed.
Explore the Rose Collection
Rose One: Juicy Rose, Align + Expand
Ripe peach combines with a honeyed, spicy rose to create a fruity, floral confection vibrationally activated to offer grounding support as you reach up to the highest realms of your being. Use to activate grounded expansion.