The seductive floral from London-based Mabelle O’Rama, now in a handy 7.5 ml travel spray. Forbidden Bloom brings together gardenia and frangipani, two flowers with an extraordinarily heady scent. It’s no coincidence it was a two-time finalist at The Fragrance Foundation UK Awards 2024.
Behind the fragrance lies a tale of forbidden love. In the secret garden of Astarte, goddess of love, these two flowers were never supposed to grow side by side, for fear their combined scent would be too overwhelming. They did anyway, becoming ever more entwined.
On the skin, Forbidden Bloom is creamy, full and sensual, with all the intensity of an extrait. The compact size goes wherever you go, so you can refresh it easily, even later in the evening. It’s also a beautiful introduction if you’d like to get to know this scent at your own pace.
Pear, Peach, Frangipani, Gardenia, Coffee, Cedarwood, Ambergris, Musk
Mabelle O'Rama
Mabelle is a Lebanese-British perfumer and artist. During the pandemic she turned to scent as a way to escape for a moment, which led to her own brand and grew into a fascination of what scent does to us: how it brings back memories and shapes how we feel. From her studio in London she creates perfumes that move somewhere between nostalgia and fantasy. She draws inspiration from her Phoenician heritage and from the cosmos, which she sees as both our past and our future home.
Every perfume is hand-bottled in London. Her work hasn’t gone unnoticed: in 2023 she received an honourable mention from the Institute of Art and Olfaction, in 2024 she was a finalist at the UK Fragrance Foundation Awards, and this year Lunar Dust won Best Skin Scent at the Marie Claire UK Fragrance Awards. We’re delighted to share her world with you in Amsterdam.