- SHOP
- EXPLORE
- ABOUT
- Sign in
-
SHOP
-
EXPLORE
- ABOUT
Bleeding Heart smells like cold metal passing through a living floral heart, then disappearing beneath a flood of caramel-gold white chocolate. The opening is sharp, cooling, and strangely physical: the flash of the Dagger Accord against dark Madagascar Cocoa Extract. Bulgarian Rose, Strawberry, and Peony gather at the center like gifts of courtship, tender and flushed with life. As the perfume settles, White Chocolate and Blonde Caramel become creamy and luminous, surrounded by Madagascar Vanilla Bourbon Absolute, Amber Woods, and White Musk.
It is an edible floral with a blade inside it: metallic without becoming austere, gourmand without becoming sugary, and romantic without losing its danger.
TO EXPERIENCE: The 50mL parfum launches publicly October 21. First Access recipients will receive private preorder details by email.
Bleeding Heart parfum opens with the sensation of cold, bright metal. Rose oxide, cooling Cardamom Oil, and a flash of grapefruit give the Dagger Accord its startling clarity, while Madagascar Cocoa Extract rises beside it like the first dark mist of an incision.
The perfume then opens into Bulgarian Rose, Strawberry, and Peony. The floral heart feels offered rather than arranged: petals, ripe fruit, tenderness, and sweetness gathered in one living form. The blade remains present long enough to sharpen the beauty around it, then begins to disappear.
On skin, the drydown feels like release. White Chocolate turns molten with a golden infusion of Blonde Caramel. Madagascar Vanilla Bourbon Absolute, Amber Woods, and White Musk surround the body until the opening tension is submerged in creamy light. The effect is plush, luminous, and enveloping, less like dessert than sanctuary.
For those drawn to florals with emotional depth, non-sweet, tactile gourmands, and perfumes that move from tension toward warmth.
When love has nowhere left to go.
At the instant cold metal disappears beneath warm, living sweetness.
The heart returned to itself, luminous and still open.
Bleeding Heart began before I found the flower. While studying sacred architecture, I encountered the Chiesa del Gesù di Casa Professa in Palermo. Its Sicilian Baroque interior appeared almost edible: cream, blush, rose, gold, and floral abundance layered like an enormous, impossible wedding cake. I imagined cutting a slice from the church and asked what that charged architecture would taste like on the tongue or smell like on skin.
When I later found the Bleeding Heart mythology, I realized there was overlap with my vision of the cathedral, and then the perfume came into focus. The familiar gifts of courtship were already there: rose, peony, strawberry, and chocolate. But the "bleeding" flower also carried a wound. I wanted the fragrance to begin with the shock of the dagger, that kind of gut-wrenching heartbreak that feels like a stabbing. But then change the ending to one of survival, by turning unrequited love back onto oneself. The wound loses its power, and all the love prepared for someone else returns to its source, the very inspiration the cathedral instilled.
Perfumer Laure Breysse rendered that movement in fragrance: cold metal, the offered floral heart, and finally the caramel-gold white chocolate "vital essence" released through the wound. Bleeding Heart became an homage to anyone heartbroken and a talisman for the moment love returns to the self.
—Joseph Quartana, Creator
Creator Joseph Quartana
Bleeding Heart is a pierced floral gourmand from Les Potions Fatales: an edible composition of cold sharp metal, sweet rose, strawberry, peony, and molten caramel-gold white chocolate. Created by Joseph Quartana with Symrise perfumer Laure Breysse, it is the official tenth-anniversary release of Les Potions Fatales and the collection’s tenth Potion Fatale.
The fragrance transforms the poisonous flower’s image of wounded love into an act of survival. The dagger wound is rendered inert as unrequited love returns to the wearer as strength, self-possession, and protection.
Each pendant bloom of the Bleeding Heart flower, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, resembles a cardioid heart releasing nectar from below. The plant is poisonous if ingested, holding danger inside extraordinary beauty.
In the flower’s romantic story, a prince offers a princess flowers, fruit, sweets, and unwavering devotion. When his love goes unanswered, he pierces his chest with a dagger, leaving the bloom to hold the drama forever.
PARFUMS QUARTANA changes the ending. The prince survives. The flower keeps its poison, but the dagger wound loses its power. Rose, peony, strawberry, and chocolate become gifts returned to their source. The wearer becomes both the Bleeding Heart and the recipient of everything it releases.
Ten years after Les Potions Fatales first explored the dangerous beauty of poisonous flowers, Bleeding Heart opens the collection’s second decade by putting transformation into action. Heartbreak becomes self-love worn on the skin.
The full public ORIGIN tells the whole story.
Each pendant bloom of the Bleeding Heart flower, Lamprocapnos spectabilis, resembles a cardioid heart releasing nectar from below. The plant is poisonous if ingested, holding danger inside extraordinary beauty.
In the flower’s romantic story, a prince offers a princess flowers, fruit, sweets, and unwavering devotion. When his love goes unanswered, he pierces his chest with a dagger, leaving the bloom to hold the drama forever.
PARFUMS QUARTANA changes the ending. The prince survives. The flower keeps its poison, but the dagger wound loses its power. Rose, peony, strawberry, and chocolate become gifts returned to their source. The wearer becomes both the Bleeding Heart and the recipient of everything it releases.
Ten years after Les Potions Fatales first explored the dangerous beauty of poisonous flowers, Bleeding Heart opens the collection’s second decade by putting transformation into action. Heartbreak becomes self-love worn on the skin.
The full public ORIGIN tells the whole story.
Created by Joseph Quartana with Symrise perfumer Laure Breysse, Bleeding Heart was built as a 20% floral gourmand whose materials follow the story’s emotional movement: blade, offered heart, love released.
The Dagger Accord gives the opening its physical precision. Metallic Rose Oxide is sharpened by cooling Cardamom Oil and a flash of Grapefruit. Madagascar Cocoa Extract rises through the opening like a dark mist, foreshadowing the chocolate to come without making the perfume immediately sweet.
Bulgarian Rose, Strawberry, and Peony form the offered heart. Their familiarity is deliberate. The creative challenge was to elevate the familiar gifts of Valentine’s Day into haute perfumery without losing their emotional immediacy.
The drydown required the greatest technical refinement. White Chocolate had to feel ultra-realistic, creamy, and radiant without becoming waxy, sugary, or candied. Blonde Caramel holds it in a permanent golden register, while Madagascar Vanilla Bourbon Absolute, Amber Woods, and White Musk give the composition lift, diffusion, and a cocooning finish.
The Stabbing
Dagger Accord, Madagascar Cocoa Extract
The Heart
Bulgarian Rose, Strawberry, Peony
The Love
White Chocolate, Blonde Caramel, Madagascar Vanilla Bourbon Absolute, Amber Woods, White Musk
Bleeding Heart earns its place through the completeness of its transformation. Cold metal, cocoa, rose, strawberry, peony, white chocolate, caramel, vanilla, woods, and musk move as one emotional arc: the blade enters, the heart opens, and the love released through the wound returns to the wearer.
Perfumer Laure Breysse made White Chocolate the technical and narrative center of Bleeding Heart. Blonde Caramel gives it a molten golden register, while Madagascar Vanilla Bourbon Absolute, Amber Woods, and White Musk prevent the composition from collapsing into sweetness. The result is creamy and enveloping, but it keeps its shape on skin.
Bleeding Heart is both the official tenth-anniversary release of Les Potions Fatales and its tenth Potion Fatale. The first nine fragrances approached poisonous flowers as thresholds to transformation. Bleeding Heart carries that discovery forward, turning the mythology of a pierced heart into an experience of survival, self-possession, and love reclaimed at its source.
Perfumer Laure Breysse
