Roja Innuendo Parfum

Innuendo belongs to the earlier part of Roja Dove's catalogue, from around 2012, when the Mayfair house he founded in 2011 was still establishing what it was going to be. It no longer appears in the range listed on Roja's own website, which makes it a collector's proposition rather than a current release, and worth understanding on those terms before you buy.

Dove's background explains the fragrance better than any note list. He joined Guerlain in 1981, stayed nearly twenty years, became its Global Ambassador as the first person from outside the founding family, and earned the title Professeur de Parfums. Innuendo is the most obviously French-classical thing in his line: a floral chypre built the way they were built in the middle of the last century, with orris at its centre.

The opening is a clean citrus flourish, lemon, bergamot, orange and lemon verbena, gone within twenty minutes but doing exactly what an old-fashioned top accord should. Then the flowers, arranged rather than piled: May rose and jasmine carrying the middle with ylang-ylang for creaminess and violet drifting across it. The base is the point. Orris root gives the powdery, cool, faintly carrot-and-suede quality that only real iris material produces, and it is supported by patchouli, sandalwood, tonka bean, labdanum and musk, so the drydown is powdery and woody at once, elegant and slightly severe. It smells expensive in an unshowy way.

Wear it in cooler weather and in the evening, or in daylight if you are comfortable smelling deliberately old-school. Iris does not enjoy humidity, so the coast is not its friend.

Two caveats, both honest. As a parfum concentration with a heavy orris and patchouli base, it lasts a long time, comfortably eight to ten hours and often more, sitting close rather than projecting after the first hour. And because it is not part of the current line-up on the house's site, the published pyramid comes from secondary fragrance databases rather than from Roja directly. The character is well attested; the exact proportions are not officially documented.