The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Rome In Green arrived in 2024 from The Dua Brand, composed by Mahsam Raza. The brand has built its catalog around its Inspired Expression collection, and Rome In Green sits inside that line as a direct study of Valentino's Uomo Born In Roma Green Stravaganza. The composition takes a green fougère with citrus bite and pushes it toward something roasted and heavier, leaning the coffee and vetiver into territory the original only hints at. What emerged is a stripped-back, high-contrast composition. Calabrian bergamot up top, espresso through the middle, smoky Haitian vetiver underneath. Three materials, one tightrope. The point was never to replicate every facet of the inspiration. The point was to keep the bones and rebuild the muscle.
What makes this composition interesting is what it leaves out. Three notes, three roles, zero filler. Calabrian bergamot brings that specific Mediterranean sharpness: zest without sweetness, green without herbs. The bergamot here reads almost cold at first contact, a quick spark of citrus oil that never crosses into soapy or synthetic, then settles into something closer to rind and pith than to juice. Haitian vetiver closes the triangle with its cold, mineral smoke.
The evolution
The opening belongs to the bergamot. It hits cold and almost metallic, like biting into citrus rind still attached to the leaf. That first contact is sharp and brief, the kind of brightness that announces itself before it settles. Then the coffee wakes up underneath and the whole opening recalibrates. The bright citrus doesn't vanish, it gets darkened, stained brown by the roast. The coffee here behaves less like a flavor and more like an atmosphere, a low haze of roasted bitterness that sits behind the bergamot rather than competing with it. As the citrus recedes, the coffee takes fuller command of the composition, reading dark, dry, and slightly ash-like on skin. It's not sweet. It's not meant to be. The Haitian vetiver rises into that coffee haze from below, and the combination reads almost geological: scorched earth over cold stone.
Cultural impact
Rome In Green lives in the same conversation as Valentino's Uomo Born In Roma Green Stravaganza. It belongs to a category of compositions that take a recognizable designer profile and rework it into a leaner, more stripped-down form, and that repositioning is part of what makes it worth talking about. The audience that tends to gravitate toward it already knows what a fougère smells like and wants one that skips the usual shortcuts, the heavy layering of lavender, geranium, and oakmoss that defines the more traditional versions of the genre.
