October 1st 6pm Belvedere Villa Borghese – Roma – elegant and intimate and mystical

A few weeks ago, I hosted a gathering of friends for an evening of perfume sniffing, wine drinking and a few laughs. When we get together for these evenings, we all bring some fragrances to share/try. For this evening, I brought out my bottle of October 1st 6pm Belvedere Villa Borghese – Roma from Italian niche line Memento Italian Olfactive Landscapes. I loved the fragrance and was curious about what my besties thought of it.

The next day, I got an email from Jennie, telling me how much she enjoyed the evening and loved October 1st 6pm Belvedere Villa Borghese – Roma. She said the moment she smelled it, her memory of a tryst with a handsome Italian stranger in the Villa Borghese one autumn evening came to life.

I can’t say I was surprised (about the tryst, yes, about the fragrance, no) since the credo for the brand is to create scents linked to a memory of a specific place and time.

I’ve been to the Villa Borghese in Rome a few times, but my adventures there differed from Jennie’s. It’s a large landscape garden with museums, buildings, sculptures and attractions, but It’s the smell of the place that’s stayed with me over the years.

October 1st 6pm Belvedere Villa Borghese opens with a bright, elegant note of bergamot flanked by a sweet, sunny Mandarin orange. A delicate note of elemi adds a piney freshness to the citrus fruits. As it settles, powdery, earthy orris root creates an erotic mood heightened by aquatic accents that give the impression of a cool, caressing breeze. I smell rum, which adds boozy warmth to the heart, while green, woody olibanum places us in a mystical garden. There are woods in this garden, too: cedarwood, vetiver and patchouli.  The vetiver is a veil of earthiness, and the patchouli is dark and sensuous.

The drydown is elegant and intimate and beckons to be smelled, but the way this scent is paced makes it so crave-able. There’s room in the fragrance for each impression to shingle down to the next, creating a sensory sequence that pulls me in deeper and deeper; it starts with a sunniness that transitions to dusk, moves from the erotic to the mystical, and evokes summer, moving to autumn.

I love wearing this fragrance and linking new memories to it.

Check out October 1st 6pm Belvedere Villa Borghese – Roma in our Shop.