The Awkward Marine Beauty of Sogno Reale

by: Miguel Matos

Nowadays, very few perfumes can make me say “I have never smelled anything like this before.” Well, Sogno Reale sure can take home the prize of “Unusual Perfume of the Year.” The new edition from Italian house Mendittorosa was created by the hip and cool, talented and proficuous Amelie Bourgeois and Anne-Sophie Behaghel from the Parisian atelier Flair. The "Flair Girls” are the new stars who seem to be the artists everyone wants to work with. And there's a reason for this. They always create very honest fragrances that manage to be original but not too strange and still wearable. This is a hard balance and the best two examples of this were seen (or rather smelled) at Esxence, in Milan: Room 1015 Atramental and this gem, Sogno Reale for Mendittorosa.

The concept of Sogno Reale was based on a dream Stefania Squeglia had, as she told Fragrantica in the interview she gave me. Her dream was about a king of the ocean, a sea urchin. But it also has the smells of citruses and leather in it. So she called the Flair Girls, who always make the perfumes for her in a special spiritual connection. Stefania asked Amélie and Anne-Sophie to translate her dream into a perfume. And never in my dreams I have encountered such a strange and compelling smell.

Sogno Reale is undoubtedly a polarizing fragrance. It's tart/sweet/salty/animalic vibe is not related to any perfume that I know of. And the first thing I can associate it is fresh seafood with a big dash of lemon and caramel. I come from a country where there are beaches everywhere and seafood is not a rare thing to eat. But somehow, aquatic scents are not my thing. This is an aquatic/marine that was thrown into an oriental ambery heart and was given a considerable dose of animal smells. Over all this mix there's a huge glass of fresh squeezed citrus juice. When you first apply it, there's a strangeness, a seafood-y smell. It sounds so very awkward, but I was immediately hooked on the opening.

Lemon tartness, salty oceanic breeze, sweet notes of amber... it all seems so wrong but it's oh so right on. I have to tell you that this is useless on paper, you have to try it on your skin, for it works with it. More than that, it melts like butter. And yes there's a certain greasiness about it. When you wear it and you start to think that this could be overwhelming, it immediately fuses with your body in a very strange way. Well, almost all of the scents created by the Flair Girls have a specific airy quality (not Frapin's Nevermore, though). And even when they make this awkward smell of sea and animals, they can infuse it with space for breathing. It's a breeze, an animal dream breeze that comes from my skin. And sometimes I even wish it was stronger, for I became addicted.

This is a shy scent. It stays close to the skin, although it has a pretty decent longevity. But I tend to forget I am wearing it, apart from the occasional whiff, when I have something like a small olfactive orgasm. I started to carry this dreamy heavy bottle with me and for a whole week I was reapplying it every two hours, just to get that rush of strangeness. It seems that the people around me could smell it better than I could. Another thing: I normally cannot wear the same fragrance two days in a row. However, during the first days, when I wore something else I found myself craving Sogno. It is addictive, intimate and carnal. It started to be MY scent and when a friend sprayed it on herself I felt angry. That's how “mine” I felt it to be.

I eventually got over this initial obsession and now I can wear other perfumes, butSogno Reale has the ability to detach itself from everything else in my collection. It is one of my favourite perfumes in a way that I can't seem to explain. Well, I guess sometimes you can't explain your dreams; you just dream them.

Product Images: Mendittorosa; Paintings: Noronha da Costa