Orto Parisi Megamare: Worth It?
Article Summary: Megamare is a 2019 marine fragrance from Orto Parisi, the Amsterdam-registered house created in 2014 by Alessandro Gualtieri, and it is the one that took the brand from niche curiosity to something stocked in Dubai department stores. The single most useful fact about it is a refusal: Orto Parisi publishes no notes for any of its fragrances, and states that as policy on its own website. Every pyramid you have read for Megamare, including the one on our own product page, was assembled by somebody other than the people who made it. The brand calls the concentration simply parfum, sells it in one size only, 50 ml, and prices every fragrance in its range identically. In Dubai it is AED 751 at Ounass, at Galeries Lafayette and at Bloomingdale's, which is the first fragrance we have covered this month with no price spread at all. MOJ's reading, Megamare M, is AED 48, 59 and 109, every size available on November 10, 2026.
- Orto Parisi publishes zero notes, as stated policy. Any pyramid you see was written by a retailer.
- AED 751 at all three UAE stockists. No spread, which has not happened in any article we have written this month.
- One size only: 50 ml. There is no 30 ml and no 100 ml of the original, whatever a listing tells you.
- The brand calls it a parfum. Every UAE retailer relabels it an extrait de parfum, which the brand does not print.
The thing nobody publishes
Start here, because it changes how you read everything else written about this fragrance. Orto Parisi does not publish fragrance notes. Not for Megamare, not for any of its ten fragrances, and not as an oversight: the brand's own frequently asked questions page states that the person it calls The Nose does not reveal the materials used in his creations. The Megamare product page carries a short piece of prose, a description of the cap, and nothing else. The enthusiast databases follow suit, listing no notes either and giving only broad accords: aquatic, fresh, synthetic, spicy and woody. So where do the pyramids come from? Retailers. Galeries Lafayette Dubai prints bergamot and lemon on top, calone, hedione and seaweed in the heart, and ambrox, cedar and musk at the base. Ounass prints a flatter version of the same materials. A fashion magazine covering the launch in 2019 named ambergris, sea cucumber and seaweed instead. None of those lists came from Orto Parisi, and they do not fully agree with each other. We are not going to pretend otherwise, and neither should anyone selling it to you.
What is actually known about Megamare
The verifiable facts are short. It was released in 2019, which the brand states on its own page. It is credited to Alessandro Gualtieri by the enthusiast databases and by the trade press that covered the launch, although the product page itself names no perfumer. The brand calls the concentration parfum; every UAE retailer we checked relabels it an extrait de parfum, which is a word Orto Parisi does not use on that page. It comes in one size, 50 ml, and there is no refill, no travel size and no 100 ml, so any listing offering you a different size of the original deserves a second look. The cap is tumbled silver-coloured metal, deliberately corroded green, with a seashell from Haiti set into it. Beyond that, what you have is accords rather than ingredients: it reads as salt, ozone and something mineral over a dry woody base, which is why people describe it as the sea rather than as a list. That ambiguity is the brand's design, not a gap in the research. Our niche guide covers the houses it sits beside.
Orto Parisi, Nasomatto, and what the link actually is
You will read everywhere that the same man is behind Nasomatto and Orto Parisi, and that is effectively true, but the brands state it more carefully than the internet does. Orto Parisi's site lists Nasomatto under other projects by The Nose; Nasomatto's site lists Orto Parisi under other projects by The Nose; and Orto Parisi's biography page signs off as The Nose, Alessandro Gualtieri. Neither site says in plain words that one person founded both, and we are not going to put words in their mouths. There is also a widely quoted line about Nasomatto being dead and Orto Parisi being born, which traces to a single article we could not open, so we are not quoting it. What the biography does say is that the project is named for the founder's grandfather, Vincenzo Parisi, and his habit of collecting waste that fed the garden, which is where the name comes from: orto is Italian for a vegetable garden. The house was created in 2014, is registered in Amsterdam, and makes its fragrances in Italy. It now has ten, all at the same price, all in 50 ml, and the newest arrived in 2025, so the founder is evidently still working.
Buying one in the UAE, and the spread that is not there
This is the unusual part. On November 10, 2026 Megamare was AED 751 at Ounass, AED 751 at Galeries Lafayette Dubai and AED 751 at Bloomingdale's. Three stockists, one price, no markdowns. We have written about five fragrances this month and every one of them had a Dubai price range of hundreds of dirhams; this one has none, which tells you the brand controls its distribution tightly and that nobody here is discounting it. Ounass had an active buy button. Galeries Lafayette rendered contradictory availability on the same page, showing a sold-out notice alongside a buy button and a two-left counter, so treat that as a price rather than a promise. Bloomingdale's listed it without a stock state. Faces, Sephora and Carrefour do not carry Megamare at all; Carrefour stocks eight other Orto Parisi fragrances but not this one. The brand's own site ships to the Emirates by courier at 155 euros, roughly AED 660 before shipping and duty, so the local price carries about a fourteen percent premium for the convenience. There is no Orto Parisi counter in the UAE that we could confirm. One warning: a Dubai website whose domain suggests a well-known perfume chain is in fact a different business trading as Niche Gallery, and it lists Megamare in sizes the house does not make, so check the size and the seller before you pay. Our where-to-buy guide has the authorised list.
What nobody can prove about it
Megamare has a reputation far larger than its documentation. It has no award: we checked the Art and Olfaction Awards, the Fragrance Foundation and the main enthusiast award lists and found nothing for Megamare or for Orto Parisi in any year. No named publication has published a sales figure or a ranking for it. The only hard popularity number that exists is a database rating, 7.3 from a little over two thousand three hundred people, which tells you it is widely owned and well liked and nothing more. The contemporaneous coverage amounts to two pieces from 2019, a launch note in April and a magazine write-up in May. What it does have is a cloud of cheaper fragrances positioned against it, and the one named most often is Lattafa Atlas from 2023, which the databases list first in both directions when you look up either one. Worth being precise about what that means: there is no shared perfumer, because Atlas has no perfumer credited at all, and neither house has said anything about the other. The similarity percentages you see quoted are estimates calculated from published note lists, which is a particularly odd thing to compute for a fragrance whose maker publishes no notes.
The MOJ reading
Ours is the honest case where we have to tell you what we built from. Because Orto Parisi publishes nothing, our product page follows the pyramid that Dubai retailers print: bergamot and lemon on top, seaweed, calone and hedione in the heart, and musk, ambroxan and cedar at the base. That is a retailer's reconstruction rather than a formula, and our reading is a reading of that reconstruction. We would rather say so than imply we are working from something the brand released. What it gives you is the recognisable shape: a sharp citrus opening, a salty marine middle built on the two materials most responsible for that smell in modern perfumery, and a clean ambroxan and cedar base. Whether it matches a bottle of the original material for material, nobody outside Orto Parisi can tell you, including every other shop selling an alternative. It is our own composition inspired by the original, in 30, 50 and 100 ml at AED 48, 59 and 109, every size available on November 10, 2026. Note that the original exists only in 50 ml, so ours is the only way to try this style in a 30 ml. The arithmetic: AED 109 for 100 ml against AED 751 for 50 ml works out at about fourteen times less per millilitre. It sits in our men's collection although it wears unisex, and our fresh guide has its neighbours.
- Top: bergamot, lemon
- Heart: seaweed, calone, hedione
- Base: musk, ambroxan, cedar
Should you buy the original or the reading
If you want the real thing, the price is the same wherever you go, so buy it from Ounass or Bloomingdale's and spend the effort on checking the size rather than hunting a discount. There is no discount to find, and a listing offering a 30 ml or a 100 ml of the original is selling you something the house does not make. Accept that you will never know exactly what is in it, because that is the point of the brand rather than a failure of yours. If you want to find out whether salt and ozone over dry wood suits you before spending AED 751 on a bottle you cannot sample in a small size, our 30 ml at AED 48 is the cheapest way to answer that question, built as described above from a retailer's note list rather than the brand's. Our guide to inspired perfumes explains what a reading is and is not. Stock changes, so the product page is the final word.
Frequently Asked Questions
Salt, ozone and something mineral over a dry woody base, which is why people describe it as the sea rather than as a list of ingredients. That description is deliberately vague because the brand gives you nothing else to work with: Orto Parisi publishes no notes for Megamare, and the enthusiast databases publish none either, listing only broad accords of aquatic, fresh, synthetic, spicy and woody. The note pyramids you see at retail were written by retailers. Galeries Lafayette Dubai prints bergamot and lemon on top, calone, hedione and seaweed in the heart, and ambrox, cedar and musk at the base; a magazine covering the 2019 launch named ambergris, sea cucumber and seaweed instead. It was released in 2019, the brand calls the concentration parfum, and it comes in one size only, 50 ml. MOJ's reading, Megamare M, is AED 48 for 30 ml, 59 for 50 ml and 109 for 100 ml.
Because it has decided not to, and it says so. The brand's own frequently asked questions page states that the person it calls The Nose does not reveal the materials used in his creations. That applies to all ten Orto Parisi fragrances, not just Megamare. The Megamare product page carries a short piece of prose, a description of the cap, and nothing resembling a note list. Fragrantica and Parfumo follow the same line and publish only accords. The practical consequence is that any pyramid you are shown for this fragrance, by any seller including us, is a reconstruction rather than a formula, and the versions in circulation do not fully agree with each other.
AED 751 for the 50 ml, and unusually that is the price everywhere. On November 10, 2026 Ounass, Galeries Lafayette Dubai and Bloomingdale's all showed AED 751, with no markdowns at any of them. Ounass had an active buy button; Galeries Lafayette rendered contradictory availability on the same page, so treat that as a price rather than a promise; Bloomingdale's listed it without a stock state. Faces, Sephora and Carrefour do not carry Megamare at all, although Carrefour stocks eight other Orto Parisi fragrances. The brand's own site ships to the Emirates at 155 euros, roughly AED 660 before shipping and duty. There is only one size, so a listing offering you a 30 ml or 100 ml of the original is selling something the house does not make.
No, and nothing connects them beyond what wearers report. Atlas, from 2023, is the fragrance most often named alongside Megamare, and the enthusiast databases list each first in the other's similar-smelling column. What is documented is nothing: there is no shared perfumer, because Atlas has no perfumer credited at all, and neither Orto Parisi nor Lattafa has made any statement about the other. The similarity percentages circulating online describe themselves as estimates calculated from published note lists, which is a strange thing to compute for a fragrance whose maker publishes no notes. If you want the comparison, make it with your own nose rather than a number somebody generated.
No, it is our own composition inspired by the original, and we have to be unusually honest about what we built it from. Because Orto Parisi publishes nothing, our product page follows the pyramid that Dubai retailers print: bergamot and lemon on top, seaweed, calone and hedione in the heart, and musk, ambroxan and cedar at the base. That is a retailer's reconstruction rather than a formula, so ours is a reading of that reconstruction. What it gives you is the recognisable shape: a sharp citrus opening, a salty marine middle, and a clean ambroxan and cedar base. Whether it matches a bottle of the original material for material, nobody outside Orto Parisi can say. It is AED 48, 59 and 109 for 30, 50 and 100 ml, every size available on November 10, 2026, and since the original exists only in 50 ml, ours is the only way to try this style in a 30 ml.
