Roja Haute Luxe Parfum

The name is a statement of intent. Haute Luxe appeared in 2013, two years after Roja Dove established his house in Mayfair, and it sits at the very top of the range for sheer material density. It is the kind of release that exists partly to demonstrate what a perfumer does when nobody is costing the formula down.

It is an ambery oriental in the old French manner and its construction is deliberately archaic. A single bright note opens it, bergamot and not much else, before the fragrance drops almost immediately into flowers: ylang-ylang, jasmine and Rose de Mai, rich and slightly narcotic, the Grasse trio used without restraint. From there it becomes a study in resins. Benzoin, labdanum, styrax and amber build the body. Cloves, cinnamon and ginger dry it out and give it lift. Iris runs a cool powdery seam through the middle. Oakmoss, patchouli, vetiver, cedar and amyris hold the base down, and vanilla sits under everything without ever becoming the point.

What it smells like is a 1920s oriental made with modern precision, closer to the great vintage ambers than to anything contemporary. It is heavy, sweet-resinous and faintly church-like, and it makes no attempt to be fresh at any stage of the wear.

This is formal evening dress in fragrance form and cold-weather wear, and there is no getting around either. A Cape winter dinner, an occasion with a stated dress code. Applied in Highveld summer it becomes overpowering within the hour.

Two honest points. First, Haute Luxe is absent from the house's current online range, so availability runs through specialists and secondary channels, and it is worth verifying exactly what you are buying. Second, performance is extreme even by Roja standards. This is a parfum, and twelve hours on skin with heavy projection through the first several is normal. One spray, placed on clothing rather than pulse points, keeps it civilised.