Why the Rose is Beauty's New Secret Weapon — elle.com

I never expected to rest on a literal bed of roses, but here I am, sprawled inelegantly 
atop piles of pink blooms that stretch boundlessly around me in all directions. The petals are so soft and the smell so intoxicating that for a few seconds I slip into a dizzy-brained reverie: Am I in the throes of some American Beauty–esque dream? Have I died and gone to a special heaven for rose fanatics? In fact, I’m lying on the floor of a distillation facility near Isparta, Turkey—a town, nicknamed Rose City, about an hour’s flight from Istanbul—and the bounteous blossoms around me, a whopping 15 tons of them in total, are merely one morning’s harvest from the surrounding fields. A few hours ago, I was out there myself, picking the delicate Rosa damascena flowers—which bloom for only a month between May and June in this region and must be plucked from the bushes by hand when they are open and most fragrant—that provide the raw material for countless perfumes, as well as for the popular rose-infused product line from New York–based beauty brand Fresh. I thought that the burlap bag I filled up would make a mighty contribution—until I saw this room, overflowing with petals like a floral sea. What could I do but roll around in them?

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