Perfume Review: Acqua di Parma Profumo

"Steps were heard at the door, and Princess Betsy, knowing it was Madame Karenina, glanced at Vronsky. He was looking toward the door, and his face wore a strange new expression. Joyfully, intently, and at the same time timidly, he gazed at the approaching figure, and slowly he rose to his feet." Lev Tolstoy, Anna Karenina In the great and waning chypre genre, Acqua di Parma's Profumo is one of the most often overlooked and most easily available gems. It is everything a chypre lover might possibly want in a fragrance, the bright citrusy top, the sensual floral-spicy heart, and the opulent, dark woody-mossy base. It even has a very prominent animalic undertone, the kind of cumin-y, civet-y dirt without which, to me, a chypre is just not a chypre. It is full-bodied and graceful, infinitely feminine. It is perfect. What's more, whenever I smell this Italian creation, it, strangely, makes me think of Russia. It might be that the delightfully waxy smell that roses and jasmine have in this composition and its spicy-incensey undertone remind of me of Orthodox churches. Frankly, I don't know. It is one of those associations which, once inexplicably made, can't be shaken off. Not that I would want to. And if I were to match Profumo to a book or a literary heroine, it without a doubt would be Anna Karenina, she who carried "her rather full figure with extraordinary lightness". I once read that for Tolstoy Anna represented his own sexuality, and because he was afraid of his sexuality, he killed her. Profumo is that inner being in us which simultaneously attracts and repulses us, because we feel that if we let it loose, the results would be, at best, cataclysmic or, most probably, tragic. Profumo can be found at Sephora, $173.00 for 3.3oz. Image source, best-newz.ru