This lyrics from Alannah Miles’s song Black Velvet are the perfect description for my feelings when it comes to Jo Malone fragrances. I actually love most of them and I would really really love to own them all. I love their simplicity, their pureness and their versatility.

Most of them have only two main notes, dominant, that give the name of the fragrance. That makes them perfect for layering, mix&matching or just for enjoying a pure smell of a note/element/flower. Also, it is very useful that you can find on-line charts of how to combine their aromas, in order to create unique fragrances.

The fragrance I’m referring to in this post in Velvet Rose and Oud, another Black Friday buy from the lovely Obsentum. Unlike other buys, this one was not a blind. I have tried it on once on a blotter paper and once on my skin, but because I wore a mask, I didn’t get the full experience, because until I got outside and took the mask off, the smell faded.

When Black Friday started, I already had a list prepared and Velvet Rose and Oud was high up. I ended up paying about 30 euros for the 50 ml bottle, with the discount and fidelity points sa it really was a bargain. As a personal note, I always buy discount when it comes to shopping.

As the name states, Velvet Rose and Oud is a Rose&Oud fragrance, more roses than oud actually, perfect for roses lovers. I really love the rose&oud combination in fragrances and I have it in various perfumes. One of my favourite is Rose Oud from Yves Rocher, about which you can read here.

Getting back to Jo Malone, Velvet Rose and Oud opens with a heavy smell of rose, but not that light bulgarian rose, more like a heavy arabian one. Whet I smell it, my mind imagines a big, fat red rose, whit velvety petals, fully bloomed, in the middle of the summer.

The fragrance has in it’s composition, besides roses and agarwood, pralines and clove. The pralines give it a bit of a gourmand-sweet note, but not nauseating or disturbing, just perfect. If you know how the black chocolate with rose petals smell, well that kind of is the praline in this fragrance.

As I said in the unboxing video, I think this one is a formal fragrance, for a mature person, for cold days and nights. It is suited for both women and men, if the men are brave enough to wear roses. It is a perfect fragrance for office work, cocktails or black tie events, because, despite the great silage and long lasting on the skin period, it is not overwhelming or disturbing. That velvet in the name it really characterises the fragrance, which layers exactly like velvet on the skin, and doesn’t annoy others.

This is not a blind buy candidate, except if you are a really big fan of roses in fragrances, because it is more a rose fragrance than a wood fragrance. I vote for sampling before buying for this one. And as the title of this article say, you will be left wanting for more from Jo Malone.