The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
San Clemente references the Basilica San Clemente al Laterano in Rome, and its soul from the novel 'Call Me By Your Name.' Prin Lomros built this fragrance around Elio's memories: the time spent with Oliver in Italy, the afternoons that stretched into something more, the weight of a summer that changed everything. The name itself, San Clemente, references a specific place in the city, a setting where memory and geography intertwine. It's a fragrance about looking back at something that can't be repeated. The composition unfolds with the warmth of sunlit stone, dry and ancient, before revealing a heart of red wine and leather that feels like a moment held too long.
What makes San Clemente unusual in the Strangers Parfumerie catalogue is its willingness to sit with contradiction. The opening is fruity, cherry, apricot, pomegranate, but it doesn't stay sweet. The wine accord pushes against the fruit, giving it a fermented, almost acidic edge. Then the smoke arrives not as a loud statement but as something that was always there, waiting under the surface. It's this layering of warmth and bitterness that makes the composition feel less like a love letter and more like the aftermath of one.
The evolution
The first five minutes hit with a jolt of citrus, mandarin orange cutting through dark wine and espresso. It's unexpected, almost sharp, like biting into a cherry pit. Within fifteen minutes, the fruit softens. The rose emerges, delicate and slightly dry, woven through with frankincense that adds a faint medicinal warmth. The cotton note reads as clean fabric left in the sun, a quiet reminder of the domestic intimacy at the heart of the novel. An hour in, the leather arrives. Not new leather, old, cracked, the kind that holds years of wear. Tobacco thickens beneath it, and the smoke settles into the base like something that won't fully disappear. By hour three, only oakmoss, soil, and a ghost of ember remain: the smell of a place after everyone has left, but before the tidying up begins.
Cultural impact
San Clemente has become something of a collector's artifact. Discontinued shortly after its 2018 debut, it now trades in the secondary market at prices that reflect its cult status. Among the Strangers Parfumerie catalogue, it stands apart for its willingness to be melancholic rather than moody, specific rather than conceptual. The wine-smoke-leather triad is unusual in independent perfumery, a combination that gives the fragrance a distinctive character. The wine note provides a fruity sweetness that tempers the smoke, while the leather adds a textured, animalic depth that grounds the composition.
