Uomo Born in Roma Purple Melancholia Eau de Toilette

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] The top notes are truly the epitome of a tropical island! It opens up with a blast of cardamom and then immediately goes into the smooth coconut with a light background of lavender. I’m personally not a fan of lavender notes and this fragrance blends it nicely. Not overly synthetic like some designers usually are— the dry down is amberwood so you can definitely wear this in colder weather as well due to the vanilla woodiness.

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I received this product for free from Influenster and Valentino in exchange for my unbiased review. Am I just extremely sensitive to coconut, or did I receive a bad bottle? Who knows but holy moly is the coconut strong in this. You’d think that in a purple bottle the lavender would stand out more but after one spray, I was enveloped in a sickening cloud of synthetic coconut. I do not get any other notes from this — the coconut overpowers all. The bottle is beautiful, pump delivers a good spray, but none of this matters to me as the smell was SOOO cloyingly coconut-y. The sweetness improves a little over time, it starts smelling like you had spilled gas station piña colada on yourself after a couple hours (if that was a thing). Other reviews don’t seem to mind it as much as me, so maybe i’m just sensitive to synthetic coconut smells, but that is the only thing I get from this. I had previously tried Valentino Green Stravaganza and really enjoyed that as a spring scent; The only common ground I can see is the bottle design. I definitely think you need to have reasonable expectations going in, and DEFINITELY recommend testing first. It’s 100% a summer scent, and I will try again then just to confirm.