Valentino Donna Born in Roma

Valentino Garavani opened his house in Rome in 1960, and for sixty years the name meant couture red and a very particular kind of Italian formality. Born in Roma, launched in 2019, was the deliberate break with that: a fragrance aimed at a younger buyer, named for the city rather than the founder, and packaged in a bottle whose pyramid studs Valentino describes as inspired by Roman architecture, rendered in black leather and vivid pink because, in the house's own words, pink is punk. Adut Akech and Anwar Hadid fronted the launch campaign. Valentino publishes no perfumer credit for it.

The house calls it a modern haute couture floriental and structures it around three materials: jasmine sambac at the top, cashmeran in the heart and bourbon vanilla at the base. Fragrantica's record fills in the corners with blackcurrant, pink pepper, bergamot, jasmine tea and guaiac wood. In wear, the opening is tart and slightly fizzy, blackcurrant and pink pepper over a citrus lift, and it lasts only a few minutes. What replaces it is the reason the fragrance sold: three grades of jasmine layered together, one of them a smoky jasmine tea, which keeps the white floral from reading as bridal. Then cashmeran takes over, and cashmeran is the modern woody-musky material that gives so many current perfumes their soft, slightly abrasive glow. Bourbon vanilla and guaiac wood underneath make the last hours warm, faintly smoky and a little leathery.

It is a night fragrance that has been engineered to also survive daylight, and it is at its best in cool weather. A Cape winter evening suits it; strong heat pushes the vanilla forward and flattens the tea note that makes it interesting.

Performance is good: seven to nine hours, projecting confidently while the opening lasts. Born in Roma has since grown into one of the largest flanker families in the designer market, with Intense, Coral Fantasy, Yellow Dream and other variations, none of which smell like this one, so buy the plain black-and-pink bottle if the original is what you want.