Poppy Riot is one of two 2026 releases from the Paris house Room 1015, composed by Jérôme di Marino, and it is an amber-spicy eau de parfum that starts as stewed fruit and ends as a tobacco pouch.
What it smells like
Dried plum, bitter orange and green mandarin open it. The fruit is dark rather than fresh, and the bitter orange is doing important work — without it the plum would tip into jam within minutes.
The heart is the strange part, in a good way: saffron, milk, poppy and davana together. The milk note is lactonic and slightly fatty, davana brings a boozy apricot quality, and saffron throws a leathery, almost medicinal shadow across both. On paper it sounds incoherent. On skin it holds together, mostly because the saffron keeps the sweetness in check.
Then tonka bean, tobacco, woody notes and musk take it home — warm, dry, and sweet in the way pipe tobacco is sweet. The community accord ranking runs sweet, warm spicy, tobacco, lactonic and fruity, with a metallic facet further down that some wearers pick up immediately and others never notice at all.
Who it's for
For people who like gourmand-adjacent fragrances but want a shadow in them. The sweetness here comes from fruit and tonka rather than sugar, and the tobacco keeps dragging it back from dessert.
If you already wear saffron or davana compositions this will be immediately legible. If lactonic milk notes bother you, approach with care — the milk is prominent through the first hour and it is not subtle.
Honestly on performance: this has real presence for the first two or three hours and then settles into a long, close drydown. Apply less than you think you need. Cold weather is its season, because in heat the lactonic side turns heavy quickly; autumn and winter evenings, dinners and dates are where it belongs.
How it sits in the line
Room 1015 was founded in 2015 by Michael Partouche — Dr. Mike — a pharmacist who toured with his band in London for five years before concluding that perfumery was where chemistry and music met. The house takes its name from room 1015 of the Continental Hyatt House on Sunset Strip, and builds each fragrance from a cultural reference rather than from a raw material.
Poppy Riot is one of two 2026 releases and sits at the sweeter, denser end of the line. Its nearest relative in the range is Cherry Punk — both are dark, spiced and built on an unexpected fruit — though Poppy Riot is the sweeter and less leathery of the two, and the milk note gives it a softness Cherry Punk never has. If you find Cherry Punk too animalic, this is the easier way into the same territory.
It is worth knowing that Fragrantica does not publish sillage or longevity breakdowns for any Room 1015 fragrance, so the performance notes above come from the accord profile and from wearing rather than from vote data.
The full note breakdown is on the Room 1015 Poppy Riot Eau de Parfum product page, the rest of the house is in the Room 1015 collection, and you can find comparable scents under Amber Spicy. It is also on the scent bar at our Somerville boutique — worth trying on skin before you commit, because this is a house whose fragrances change a good deal between the first spray and the drydown.