Roja Manhattan Parfum

Manhattan is Roja Dove writing about a city rather than a person, and he has been unusually direct about what he was after. The house quotes him describing a big, bold accord, at once hard and soft, setting dry cedarwood and smoky tobacco against the enveloping smoothness of vanilla and coconut. Roja calls the result uptown glamour meeting downtown edge. It sits in the Art Collection, the part of the range the house reserves for fragrances built around places and cultural moments.

The opening is deceptive - lavender, basil and bergamot, herbal and clean, giving no hint of the weight coming. The heart brings coconut in as a texture rather than a beach note, thickened by heliotrope, violet, Rose de Mai and jasmine. Then the base arrives and stays for hours: tobacco, clove, cinnamon, ginger, pink pepper, patchouli, vetiver, oakmoss, cedar, pine, benzoin, vanilla and musk. It is a long list and it behaves like one - dense, spiced, slightly boozy, with the coconut-vanilla creaminess constantly rubbing against dry wood and smoke.

Dove founded his house in Mayfair in 2011 after nearly two decades at Guerlain, where he became its first non-family Global Ambassador and picked up the name Professeur de Parfums. That Guerlain background shows here more than in most of his work: the way the base is layered, and the way it refuses to resolve into a single idea, is very much the old French school.

It is an evening fragrance for cold air. Johannesburg winter nights suit it exactly; a hot Durban afternoon does not. Fully unisex despite reading as a men's release, and it is worth trying on skin rather than paper, because the coconut behaves very differently on the two.

The parfum concentration is powerful. Twelve hours is normal, projection is heavy in the first four, and the tobacco-vanilla base clings to wool and leather for days. One spray is a wearing. Two is a commitment. Roja also offers Manhattan as an eau de parfum, which is lighter and more manageable in warm weather.