I have two fetish objects in my bag that I can’t leave home without. One a cult rose perfume and the other a quick mood-boosting rosewater spray. The perfume called Nahéma is from one of the oldest perfumers in the world, Guerlain. Critics sing praises of Nahéma because it’s not just a rose, it’s a very succulent, velvety, earth-shattering rose. Others tell me that there is hardly any rose in Nahéma. This actually explains why it’s such a perfect rose bouquet.

A perfumer once told me that one terribly cold winter night, she came back from a party and forgot a bottle of Nahéma on the dashboard of her car. The next morning more than half of the bottle’s contents had crystallised, a natural occurrence with perfumes that use rose oils. That pretty much puts the question of Nahéma’s rose or no-rose contents to rest. Yes Nahéma with huge quantities of natural rose oil, is not just a rose, it’s a rose with a peachy sensuality buttressed beautifully by oriental notes.

If you smell different varieties of rose essential oil you will discover that roses have many facets from chocolate to cheese. Essences are lighter notes, quite intense, whereas absolutes convey notes of the flower in greater complexity. Absolutes are more like smelling the flower but going deep. The absolute from a variety of rose called centifolia (100 petals) smells of apricot, honey and leather whereas damascene rose absolute smells of cheese and artichokes with a bit of lychee. Incidentally, amongst the zillion varieties of roses that grow, it’s only the above two that are actually used in perfumery.

When roses are heat distilled with steam they make an essence and cold-distilling them through a solvent gets an absolute. Essences make top notes and absolutes make base notes. Top notes are what you perceive first when you spray the perfume on your skin and base notes are typically heavier molecules that stay on the skin much after top notes have disappeared, the notes you should actually watch out for when you buy a perfume. Both essences and absolutes are used in perfumery; a perfumer is like an experienced pastry chef and knows exactly what decimal quantity of essence or absolute to put into his formula to get the perfect flower.

I am also addicted to rose water facials and body sprays. The fabulous one from Amritam, that I stock up on at Good Earth, is a great product to travel with. Otherwise, I get Annick Goutal’s rose water spray which hydrates and has a soft powdery smell with talc-like freshness.

One day, while mulling over the rose and how without much ado it had found its way into my daily ritual, I stumbled upon a perfumery dedicated to perfumes created around the rose – Les Parfums de Rosine. There is no woman more passionate when it comes to roses than the force behind this olfactive adventure, Marie Hélène Rogeon. In her spacious country home outside of Paris, she cultivates over 300 varieties of roses.

Even though I have personal reservations about smelling like a rose bed, I have to admit nothing is more classically beautiful than a rose. Its perfume is fresh enough to wear on summery days or wintery nights and sets the difficult days right. And at the Les Parfums de Rosine’s boudoir destination inside the Palais Royal opposite the Louvre museum you have shelves of exquisite elixir to choose from.

So I plunged into a discovery of over 18 perfumes for both men and women all dedicated to the rose. Woody roses, green roses, tea roses, rosy roses and thorny roses all in pretty oval flacons with hand-made tassels. There is no reason why the subject of roses should leave men out. Twill Rose is perhaps one of my favourite perfumes for men from their selection and should find its way to the shelves of any discerning man. It smells like the twig of a rose in the beginning but go backstage and discover how ‘animalic’ a rose can get, in a beastly kind of way. Its raw fetidness is smartly cloaked with hints of patchouli, amber and musk. Stunning!

Rose de feu is a delicious nimbu pani on a hot summer day. Cardamom and bergamot top notes give it freshness and lift. Add to this the creaminess of ylang ylang and the Vitamin C-ish note of magnolia to trim the sweetness. They might stop its production so if you like it, stock up. Zephir de Rose is a sabzi rose with an anis-artichoke accord. Zephir also uses Bulgarian rose essence with its wonderfully smooth creamy quality that comes right through the perfume’s tightly-strung structure. Few materials seem to have been used in making this clearly minimalist perfume.

It’s very hard to cloak vetiver in perfumery. Vetiver or khus with balsamy, rooty, woody notes when worn will literally lick your neck to constantly remind you of its presence. It makes for solid woody fragrances for men and women and in the Ecume de Rose it’s with a gunshot of helisychrum with its unmistakable dusty spicy smell.

The most famous amongst all their fragrances is La Rose de Rosine – powdery woody violet notes with the creaminess of ylang ylang make for a fabulous start backed up with rose attars. But for me it’s the Une Folie de Rose that is ultra feminine with its Hema Malini meets Sophia Loren sophistication. Super sensuous with oak moss, vetiver and patchouli in chypré notes that evolve very quickly on the skin to reveal sandal and benjoin.

I was really excited to try on Rose Kashmirie, which is the Kahmiri kahva of Les Parfums de Rosine. Yes it’s got saffron in its top notes. But sometimes one mentally wills perfumes to go a certain way just like while watching a movie and wishing what’s going to happen next. So I willed this one to go the watery almond way. But it strutted off leaving the kahva for a resinous vanillic route.

And so I left with a spring in my step mesmerised at having re-discovered the rose in mega incarnations, agile, young, old, heady, scrubland, tasty and multiple-personality. At least one of them is going to become my Fetish Number Three.

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