Elegance Wrapped in A Small Bouquet

Base: Valentino Donna Born In Roma Valentino (Oriental Floral Fragrance)

2nd Layer: Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet - Roller Ball Edition (Floral Fruity Fragrance)

Lotion: Bath & Body Works - Pure Wonder (Oriental Floral Fragrance)

Today I’m going to be layering and doing a wear test of Born In Roma and Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet (this is an affiliate link; I do make a commission if you purchase at no cost to you). This blog post was written back in April of 2025. My nose was still developing new scents and learning to pick up on fragrance notes more accurately. A lot of what I describe in this post is how I navigated "smelling" fragrances since 2022.

Intuitive moment: Pure Wonder was the only lotion I had left to use (I know I need reup ASAP on my vanilla lotions and other good pairing body butters and lotions), so intuitively I was like "maybe this will work?" and well once I looked up the notes later in the day (all my sticky notes are packed up in a binder) I realized it does in fact work for this combination!

** Please read What is Anosmia? How do I live with it? to get a full understanding of the concept of this blog and how I go about "smelling" as an anosmic.

[How I choose which perfumes to layer:

I look up all of the notes of each fragrance on Fragrantica.com. From there, as you can see below, I write them on a sticky note and place them on my wall. Since my nose can't pick up every note, and I'm not able to distinguish notes and scents by what they truly are (as you read along, you'll understand; I describe what I can smell by things I have either tasted or what I can picture in my mind), this helps.]

(I spray my perfumes in these areas: inside of my forearm, the back of my knees, the sides and back of my neck, and then on my clothes. If I'm using a rollerball, I put the products on in pulse points, plus on my ankle, and above and below my dermal piercing, which sits in the middle of my chest)

Since my sticky notes were packed up during the layering wear test, here are the pairing accords & notes:

Floral (all 3 products, duh)

Musky (Blooming Bouquet & Born in Roma)

Citrus (Blooming Bouquet & Born in Roma)

Rose (Blooming Bouquet & Pure Wonder)

White Floral (Born in Roma & Pure Wonder)

Fresh (Blooming Bouquet & Pure Wonder)

With Bergamot being a matching note in Born in Roma and Miss Dior

Anosmia was really present with this combination at first, so I had to rely on my mind's eye and smell intuition with this one. So I really hope this blog post makes sense... 😊

First Initial Dry Down:

I could only smell the Pure Wonder at first, but as I have explained before, if something has an Amber note, my nose will pick that up before anything else. Then slowly I could smell a little bit of Born in Roma, but for the most part it was mostly the Amber.

After an Hour:

The combination felt warm in my nose, and the vanilla from the Born in Roma was starting to pull through. I started to picture a soft white color, like if you were to do a Google image search of White Silk; that's what I immediately pictured. I also pictured soft white flower petals. I also pictured an all-white outdoor wedding, with tons of flowers on the ground. Images of spring were definitely really big in this moment.

Within the hour:

I went out for a walk. While walking, I decided to smell the inside of my shirt to see if I could smell or picture anything new when it came to this combination. I smelled something sweet. I immediately pictured and could kind of taste pink Jolly Ranchers. Specifically, the light pink Jolly Ranchers. As I continued my walk, I kept smelling the inside of my shirt, and the pink Jolly Ranchers smell was so strong (in a good way) that I could almost taste pink Jolly Ranchers! I would also get a powdery sensation in my nose. Like how baby powder feels on the skin, but instead of being soft on my skin, it's soft in my nose. Overall, my nose did not burn or tingle when it came to this combination. Which is a huge indicator for me if something smells good or not.

Coming back in from my 20-minute walk

I smelled my shirt again, and instead of smelling the sweet pink Jolly Ranchers, I smelled that warm Amber smell again. It is very interesting that outside, the sweet and powdery notes came out more than inside, where the amber notes came out more. So my question to you, normal-smelling people, is: Does your current environment/setting bring out specific notes in a fragrance or combination?

Hour 3:

Anosmia fully kicked in here. I wouldn't fully call what happened in hour 3 being nose blind, because so many things happened with my nose in hour 3.

At first, the powdery scent was there, but it was pretty faint for me. I turned on my space heater to see if it would amplify the combination as it did with the Sabrina Carpenter and Kayali fragrance combination, but it didn't. On my left arm, I could faintly smell the powder scent. On my right arm, I was smelling the caramel notes from the SC & Kayali combination. And inside my shirt, I smelled my deodorant. At that moment, I realized my nose had reverted to its old ways of being broken.

I do think the reason I phantom-smelled the SC & Kayali combo is due to memory. I think my mind just remembered the space heater trick with that combination, and it was just incorrect muscle memory.

Hour 5-6

I took an hour-long nap, thinking maybe it would reset my nose, and it kind of did. I pressed the inside of my left forearm to my nose, and I could smell the combination again. But it wasn't as strong as earlier. But I loved this softer version of it even more. It smelled so soft and sweet, but not a pastry gourmand sweet, more like a soft, subtle sweet. A little Keke Palmer's "this one has a little sweetness to it" vibe.

Longevity & Final Thoughts:

Factoring in that I used the rollerball version of Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet and only did one swirl of it (I was running out), I think it held up pretty well. If I had a full-size bottle of Blooming Bouquet or more product in the rollerball, I would've applied more. And so, I feel like hour 3 and after would've been a different experience for me. I still think the combination lasted pretty long, and the scent is still lingering for me.

If you're only wearing this for a few hours, like going out, a wedding, work, or anywhere where you don't plan on staying long, I feel like this is a great spring combination for this. You'll smell soft and feminine. Not too sweet. Not too floral, a nice balance of everything.

I will be doing an updated blog post about this combination since a lot has changed with my nose from 2025 to 2026. I'll use the same products, just their full-size versions, so stay tuned for that.

Until next time

- Signed, The Anosmic Alchemist 🧪🥼

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