Profumum Roma Sorriso Eau de Parfum is all about the chocolate! It starts off with darker, almost bitter, chocolate paired with sharper orange. The chocolate turned drier, more powdered, then sweeter with creamy vanilla. As the scent developed, the chocolate became milkier, sweeter, and the orange more of a sense of fruitiness in the background but less obvious as orange, which was timed with woodiness intensifying.
The base of woods seemed to ground the sweetness and made it more the idea of chocolate and orange in a perfume rather than a more photo-realistic interpretation of chocolate and orange.
- top notes: chocolate
- heart notes: bitter orange, vanilla
- base notes: wood
It opened with decadently rich, dark chocolate–not as sweet as milk chocolate but not wholly unsweetened either–laced with bright, sharp orange. In the first five minutes, the dark chocolate became slightly more like dark cocoa powder (a sense of dryness of chocolate in its powdered form) sweetened with creamy, smooth vanilla. The hint of orange was fresher, juicier, and less bitter after 15 minutes of development, which lifted up the chocolate and vanilla from becoming too buttery.
Sorriso became creamier and creamier with more of a balance between orange and chocolate over the next two hours, which also had the effect of adding more sweetness and making that chocolate less powdery and less dark, though not quite milk chocolate-sweet. The addition of woodiness seemed to add to the creaminess while grounding it from becoming too sweet or too sugary.
It shifted from darker and chocolaty, though creamy and smooth, to milky, nutty chocolate with sweet vanilla and a hint of orange (not particularly distinct, just something fruity with the chocolate) and woods (sandalwood?) over the next four hours. It had sweetened up with more lightly spiced vanilla considerably.
Application
For testing, I used 1/3 of a 1ml sample vial dabbed to the underside and topside of my wrist area on my left arm. I used an unscented moisturizer prior to applying the scent as this is also my swatching arm (aka, incredibly parched at any given moment) as I found scent did not hold well here otherwise. I purchased my sample in January 2022.
Longevity
It lasted for eight hours until it was a skin-scent and about 16 hours before it was quite difficult to detect on my skin. The sillage and projection were moderate and longer-lasting, with the scent’s projection dropping after four hours.
Personal Thoughts
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed wearing this one and how often I sniffed my wrist to get more of the scent! It makes me eager to sniff out some other chocolaty fragrances and see how it compares.
Available Sizes
- 100ml for $275
- 18ml for $93 (harder to find size in the US)
- 0.7ml sample for $6