A fresh yet addictively wearable combination of orange flower, lavender, petitgrain, cashmere woods and white suede.

Rives smells like what everyone says an Italian garden is supposed to smell like, all yellow and white flowers and lemons cut by an undercurrent of sea water, because when we talk about Italy, we talk about the places on the sea where the mangroves produce citrus for the gods and the basin’s salt does some reverse magic and sweetens the earth instead of kills it like it should.

It’s a touch herbaceous, courtesy to the lavender the inner flap tells me I should be smelling I’m sure. Mostly though, it smells like someone was really excited about the components of this fragrance and didn’t like the way it whispered, so they made it shout, and the results unfortunately remind me of bar soap.

It also reminds me of Amouage Kraken Woman and one other fragrance that an SA from Osswald used to wear a ton that bothered the manager (I believe it was an Acqua di Parma but I don’t remember which one– maybe Fico? I’ll ask next time I’m in.)

After about fifteen minutes the emergent shouting goes down and it smells much less soap-like, and the cedar comes in nicely. I don’t know what cashmere smells like but the cedar smells really soft and natural, the way the wood after you pull away the bark smells.

The seawater sticks around.

After the initial fifteen minutes the sillage goes from probably-too-much to a modest half a foot to a foot, and the lasting effect is warm and clean.