A very long time ago, March over at Perfume Posse wrote a line about perfumes that fill your head “with a deep, profound, Zen-like nothingness”, and despite the fact that I can hardly remember my own phone number these days, that line stuck in my head. I quoted it at least once, also a very long time ago, and I think of it whenever I smell a new fragrance and my only reaction is well, yes, smells like perfume.

So you can probably already see where we’re headed with Fendi’s new L’Acquarossa, aka the “red elixir of passion”. I had sort-of-middling hopes for L’Acquarossa — I do keep waiting for Fendi to do something as gorgeous as Theorema, and then put it in a bottle as lovely as Palazzo. But no, all we’ve had lately is Fan di Fendi, a fragrance that so thoroughly filled my head with a deep, profound, Zen-like nothingness that I cannot remember it at all, although I know I’ve smelled it more than once…

Read the rest of this article »