Notes: red roses, crushed violet leaves, honeycomb, lemon | Available sizes: 1 oz, 3.4 oz
Best French Rose: Diptyque Eau Rose Eau de Toilette
Why it’s worth it: If you could bottle a time-lapse photograph of a blooming rose—from rosebud to petals all unfurled—it would smell like Diptyque Eau Rose Eau de Toilette. Designed to capture the flower’s lifespan, the French fragrance has top notes of the aforementioned rose damascena and rose centifolia, which has a sweet, fruity, and full-bodied scent. Laced with fruity notes of lychee accord, the scent also serves as vanity eye candy, marked as it is with Diptyque’s iconic oval logo.
Notes: rose, lychee | Available sizes: 1.7 oz, 3.4 oz
Best Aquatic Rose: D.S. & Durga Rose Atlantic Eau de Parfum
Why it’s worth it: A Brooklyn-based perfumery, D.S. & Durga designs its fragrances to evoke an immersive experience, whisking the wearer away to a sultry, very specific scene. In the case of D.S. & Durga Rose Atlantic Eau de Parfum, the scene is a New England beach, in late summertime. The scent—fresh and invigorating, with a musky, salt-water base—captures sea breezes rustling through rose bushes.
Notes: bergamot, petals, lemon oil, linden, rose accord, dune grass, muscone, salt water, white moss | Available sizes: 1.7 oz, 3.3 oz
Best Genderless: Snif Rose Era Eau de Toilette
Why it’s worth it: Designed as a collaboration between the brand and the beauty influencer Monet McMichael, the Snif Rose Era Eau de Toilette wraps rose in fruity notes of rose and strawberry. The results are equally delicious—think a fancy tea service with scones, thick berry jams, and a fresh flower arrangement in a silver vase. The packaging, which unfolds to reveal a 3-D paper rose decked with bright illustrations, is also a treat.
Notes: rose, strawberry, pear, laundry accord, ambrette seeds, white moss, saffron, sandalwood | Available sizes: 1.0 oz
Best Spicy Rose: Frédéric Malle Portrait of a Lady Parfum
Why it’s worth it: Frédéric Malle’s spicy, heady scent—an editor favorite—is less garden-fresh rose than rose in a chinoiserie vase, displayed in a candlelit room with the faint smell of incense and velveteen settees. With a worldly and mysterious vibe, Frédéric Malle Portrait of a Lady Parfum wraps rose in jammy notes of blackcurrant and raspberry; it also has warm and woody notes of cinnamon, patchouli, sandalwood, and amber. You have to lean in close to smell the rose, which is, perhaps, just what the wearer intends.
