Memo Paris Portobello Road: A Rose Grows in Notting Hill

Portobello Road is a street that smells of several things at once — frying onions, damp brick, cut flower stems, the sweet rot of fruit crates at closing time. Memo Paris has bottled that. Portobello Road, released in 2025, is the house's attempt to render the London market in perfume: green leaves, mandarin and myrtle up top, rose and clary sage at the heart, and a base that literally lists asphalt alongside rain notes, vetiver and patchouli. It is a bold brief, and a very Memo one. The fragrance lands in the Fleurs Bohèmes collection — the line where Memo lets its florals wander off the manicured path — and the bottle carries artwork by British artist Kate Daudy. Aliénor Massenet, the perfumer behind a huge share of Memo's catalogue, signed the composition. It is a unisex EDP, sold exclusively online and in Memo Paris boutiques, at €255 for 75ml. That price and that concept invite scrutiny, and the Fragrantica crowd has obliged: 178 votes in, the fragrance sits at 3.76 overall. That is a worth-arguing-about score, not a consensus darling. So let's argue — about the rose, the rain, the asphalt, and whether a market street can really live in a bottle.