Being Pretty: Rose Prick by Tom Ford Fragrances

Review on Rose Prick by Tom Ford Fragrances

image from Tom Ford Fragrances website

    

    If you ask me what made me fall in love with perfumes, I’d say the violence the olfactory memory possesses. Every scent contains a memory. The first moment you buy perfume, the memory is not yours, yet. It’s a virtual memory of the perfumer that projects through your skin. However, the more you wear it, the more you stretch the boundaries of the perfume, you construct a distinctive memory in the scent through the events you walk through. It’s not just a memory of an event that a perfume possesses. It’s an era, an image, and a personality. And with a simple spritz, you’re back. You can always go back to yourself that you miss. But it’s just nostalgia. You are still stuck in this moment while your mind and heart seem to have traveled through time. My greed, my desire, my need to find the perfect scent to encapsulate my current status quo drive me to discover as much perfume as possible. This time, I chose ‘Rose Prick’ by Tom Ford Fragrances as the instrument to contain the spring and summer of 2024. While I found the scent pretty darling, just like a typical fragrance from Tom Ford does, its critical flaws in longevity and projection made me wonder was all that money worth the investment. 

    The first impression translocates you to the lounge of a very sophisticated hotel in New York, decorated with fresh-cut pink roses surrounded by an art deco interior that makes you feel like you are in a scene from The Great Gatsby. New money princess (who’s a daddy’s girl, obviously) sipping her 3rd cosmopolitan and applying her pink Dior lipgloss from her Goyard tote sitting next to you, the sweet, youthful yet chic and modern blend of roses and pepper makes you feel as if you are one of the preppy rich girls from New Hampshire. It is a dear and dainty scent for the perfect touch to make you charming and lovable, but with a kick to make things a bit more spicy and mischievous. 

Contrary to the frisky opening scent of roses and spices, the dry down is a bit underwhelming. Patchouli. That’s it. Despite the patchouli being in the 3rd note, it is strikingly prominent in its projection, making me ponder if this is a patchouli fragrance with hints of roses or the other way around. For the people who don't know what patchouli smells like, it’s an herbal scent that is quite musky. It’s like walking into a greenhouse full of herbs that you’ve never heard of, which tingles your senses with all kinds of simulations so much that you can’t quite pick up the senses that you’re feeling. The air is sweet and spicy, the earth, contrastingly, smells wet and murky, bugs are crawling around, and you hear water flowing from the distance, it’s a mixture of sensations that is confusing at first sight, but it grows on you, and you end up loving it. So, back to our fragrance. It’s not the scent of patchouli that’s unpleasant. I’d even say patchouli is a lovely scent. It’s the fact that it’s a fragrance named ‘ROSE prick’ that smells mostly like patchouli for most of its duration. 

The prominent PATCHOULI might be due to my skin chemistry though. Generally, my skin is overly projective when it comes to patchouli and other woody herbal scents. My skin chemistry has been always good with spicy scents, such as patchouli, pepper, and juniper berries (it’s a piney scent like the sap from pine trees). On the other hand, flower scents don’t seem to stick as well as spicy scents. Usually, the flower scents disappear within 3 hours, mostly leaving a powdery finish. Compared to ‘Metallique’ (from the house of Tom Ford AGAIN), the Lily of the Valley scent (second note) does stick around quite well for me (lasting about 3-4 hours), overbearing the vanilla scent (third note) unlike ‘Rose Prick’ which all I could smell was the third note, patchouli, instead of the rose scent in the second note. 

The longevity and sillage were not very impressive either. It took me generally 30 minutes to an hour for the first and second notes, which are roses and spices, to play out and disappear, which was a bit short for my liking. However, since it is standard for the first two notes to play out briskly, I decided that was not the main problem. The problem was that the fragrance never lasted more than 5 hours. While most fragrances last at least up to 10 hours, I found Tom Ford’s fragrances are very underwhelming when it comes to longevity. Among 4 of the fragrances from Tom Ford that I own, Tobacco Vanille, Fxxxing Fabulous, Metallique, and Rose Prick, Tobacco Vanille is the only one with moderate longevity, which lasts about 10 to 15 hours. The rest of them, disappears after 3 hours, completely vanishing its presence after 5 hours. Poor sillage is another characteristic of Tom Ford fragrances. Sillage, to be concise, is a scent trail that a fragrance leaves, which can describe how well the fragrance projects itself. A reoccurring theme: sillage for every fragrance except for Tobacco Vanille was awful again. Recognizing that Tom Ford has multiple perfumers, I can’t quite grasp the reason behind this poor projection of their fragrances. As I love the perfumes from the house of Tom Ford very much, it’s a recurring dilemma that I deal with every time I buy their perfume. It’s a guilt, it’s a pleasure. 

Now, the important part; Is it worth the money? 

The answer is flat-out no. 

The retail price for ‘Rose Prick’ is $250 for 30ml and $615 for 100ml on the official website. I bought it from a company member sale which had a huge discount, offering the 30ml bottle at a reasonable price of $122.59. The discounted price still baffled me as a broke student who desperately desires a whiff of this expensive liquid that will evaporate into the air eventually. After seeing the retail prices it perplexed me even more. I knew that Tom Ford was exceptionally expensive, but for a fragrance that’s not even from a niche brand, $615 is just too much. I know the appeal of Tom Ford fragrances better than anybody else since it’s my favorite fragrance brand, but the price is making me involuntarily boycott them. Paying $600 for something that doesn’t even last 5 hours is just outrageous. Why would I spray $600 into thin air? However, the devil inside me whispers that no other fragrance brands make these types of perfumes. And it’s true. Tom Ford’s ability to create chic and modern scents that incorporate the classical beauty of natural scents is pure magic. They translate the sensitive and sensual experiences of life into simple and bold scents that are perfect due to their simplicity and artificialness. Its beauty comes from the essence of condensation, abbreviating the intricate sensations of the fragrance into two or three prominent notes. 

‘Rose Prick’ is the perfect fragrance; if you are the right person. If you are the type of person who loves to wear Van Cleef jewelry stacked up with Cartier love bracelets, uses only Rimowa suitcases, has a pink Porsche which is a Taycan or GT3 RS, or has a custom Aston Martin DB9 in pink interior, congratulations! ‘Rose Prick’ is the fragrance for you! Unless you are outrageously rich that you can casually whip out a $600 bottle of liquid to evaporate into thin air every 5 hours, it’s mostly not worth your money. ‘Rose Prick’ is like that intricate sugar decoration on top of a wedding cake. Nonfunctional, costs of a small organ despite being so small and single time usage, and somewhat underwhelming when looking at its performance. But it’s pretty. And that’s what makes it all worth it.