Nocturnality

Trust Arquiste and Rodrigo to make a perfume that while might feel quirky it never crosses into unwearable. Nocturnality was a blind buy. And while latex, neoprene and shoe shine can seem too risky, they just provide contrast and a slight boost to the leather. They never steal the show. So, 1970’s and 80’s leather bars. Meatpacking district and Al Pacino Cruisin’ in the night! Yeah, Aramis and Antaeus ARE that vibe. And sometimes, Le Labo Ylang 49 is the sillage of a stranger in the night. Nocturnality almost brings that vibe back (hell yeah) but it feels more recent. After all, it takes place in the mid 90’s. And the leather isn’t the used, rugged and worn vest that the killer hunk wears while he smiles and lets you in. It now has an almost pleather smell to it. Something Neo would wear and not Steve Burns. Leather with a hint of smoke, the cigarette you just flicked down the street. Flowers, nocturnal beasts they say and somehow yes, there’s an air of tuberose and jasmine marking territory; the fresh but slightly rotten jasmine from Ella. With a marked vintage character; there’s hyraceum upfront and center and a civet/castoreum accord that make the animalic embrace feel circular and persistent. I do sense an Oudh like accord, reminding me of the original Dior Leather Oud. The papyrus/incense brings echoes of ELdO Rien. The neoprene and latex comes off as the smell of new shoes in a shoe emporium! Totally wearable and original. After the short shock factor dissipates though, underneath it all it’s a floral animalic leather that might remind you of older creations. As if a 90’s perfume was giving an homage to 80’s perfumes. It’s leathery, smoky and floral, animalic. With a lick of neon lights and pre Y2K aesthetics. It’s what I wanted Times Square to be and what The Deuce would have smelled like had we had a season 4. New York pre cleanup, where the nocturnal animals were having their final prowls before dawn... If Él and Ella (no similarity) were the full swing of debauchery, Nocturnality is the last remains, sensed in the rain covered NYC sideway. Fantastically evocative and totally wearable, with a beautiful sillage and longevity!

I stumbled upon a new niche fragrance store locally (shout out Scented at the Italian Centre in Glasgow! This is not an ad!) and was lucky enough to sample this and decided to purchase a discovery set almost purely to own a small vial of this fragrance. To me, this is a familiar smell - it's the sweaty dancefloor at 4am at the Eagle, it's the smell of booze, smokes and leather meeting leather in the lounge, it's, to me, probably the most masculine scent I've come across. Synthetic elements dance around floral leather and oud, settling into a deeply sexy, evocative glow of homo allure. Not to say only us fellas can enjoy it or relate to it, but I resonate with the story and the selection of notes, it takes me back to places I sometimes miss and sometimes I'm glad I'm rid of! An erotic, blunt but enveloping fragrance that excudes masculinity and excess. I think I'd turn for a woman wearing this though! A showstopper for me.

I had actually expected the fragrance to be a little more daring and dirty, but for my taste it is quite tame and the animalic notes are extremely well blended. Faux leather, a floral bouquet, sterile wannabe oud, and warm resins characterize the fragrance, which is beautifully composed and has great longevity and sillage. Very nice.

So what I got from this was a slightly and well judged fruity opening with a couple of different types of saffron one with spicy floral gourmand facets and the other being more leathery dry and dark supported by a balanced rose patchouli on a bed of musks. So this fragrance is beautiful however it does feel stacked so the notes are on top of each other. It’s a slightly seductive nocturnal so it’s a little too genderless for me. Seductive for me should fit in well defined gender roles for it to reach new heights. This is in the vein of something I would imagine Johnny Depp would wear as Jack Sparrow or Killian Hennessy with that waistcoat he’s wearing all the time. No Tom Selleck or Sean Connery here... Flipping it on its head would I find this attractive for a female? Yes I would but there are many more attractive choices especially within the rose patchouli category. This is like fit for a cute girl trying to look sexier than she really is on halloween and you still don’t look twice. Makes a nice first impression just not keeping me hooked longing for a second encounter.

I like this; but I think I like the idea behind this a little more than the actual fragrance itself. It's pretty sharp to me in the opening but calms down after a while. This is a scent that I don't think everyone could pull off though - not me, for one. This would wear me and not the other way around. Something smells a bit like rose and a subtle sweet note, but overall something vaguely smells like I spilled gasoline on myself and that's the part that I couldn't get away with. And despite all of my random thoughts here, I reiterate that I DO like this!

Comes in like a dirty lion of black leather, inky patchouli, earthy animalics and a midnight rose. All these notes and rubber, too, rush out together in an attempt to dominate you with their black wave of intensity, which works til eventually all the drama wears itself out by the end of hour two. In comes a fluffy little powdery lamb, just lightly tinged with dirt, wearing a wreath of fresh roses and what smells to me like a tinge of chocolate raspberry. Lamby stays around for 6 more hours, with no more sign of Lion.

This is so close to being great. I loooove the bottom end with all of the animalic, leather, and rose notes. My complaint is that the opening has an astringent note I can't quite put my finger on, which lingers throughout the wear time. On second wear, I layered it with Nirvana Rose to lean into the slutty, gothy portion of this scent, and that combination is really beautiful.

@rich.widow I probably shouldn't be posting because I've yet to smell this, but I had to drop by and say that reading your comment has been the hardest I've laughed in a while. Holy fuck. Anyway, this little discourse in the comments is all the convincing I need. It scares the shit out of Christian homopobes? Oh yeah, my dyke ass needs to try this one.

Strongly resinous and musky with notes of leather and patchouli, but I get the other unique notes like latex as well. It’s a very straight forward take on animalic, raw masculinity. I like it, but it lacks something that would add depth, feels very flat to my nose - it’s not cloying or suffocating though despite the strong profile which is a big plus

The first sniff may appear interesting. Dark night club, dusty atmosphere...latex, neoprene, hyrax, black leather I would expect something modern attractive, almost dangerous, but then you realize none of them is present in the scent, ... its almost 7am, this club has long been closed, dust covers the chairs, bar, tables, the lights from the ceiling are hanging only by cables and the plasterboard ceilings have fallen to the ground. Dawn rises outside. Just as quickly the darkness in the scent leaves you and only old age, ruin, eternal and omnipresent amber with its sticky prickliness, arrives.

I love Rodrigo and I love Arquiste, but this one isn’t for me. I’ll stick to my Indigo Smoke and my Misfit. I was intrigued by the paper, latex, and leather notes. Honestly most of the notes appeal to me, so I was quite excited. However, I’m not a major rose/Oud combo lover, and that’s the backbone that this fragrance seems to be built on. It feels like I’m at the Mineshaft in the Meatpacking district and the bear I’m hooking up with blasted himself with a beast mode (and slightly plummy) Western type rose/Oud. He’s also wearing a pleather harness. But you know, it can hardly stand up to the overspray. Honestly if you like that DNA, this is worth a try. Just not my bag.

The discourse on this one is HILARIOUS, it's too much of a literal take on masculinity for my nose/brain though, definitely a strong evocative scent but not complex enough and rather harsh.

I was interested in the fragrance at first because I like darker, woody, leathery, petroleum, animallic fragrances--fragrances that lean in the same direction as Encre Noire. So again, I was interested Nocturnality until I read Rodrigo Flores Roux's inspiration/history behind the fragrance. October 1996, New York City. In the neon-soaked nights of downtown New York, a young perfumer roams the city after dark, chasing inspiration. The humid air carries hints of spilled booze, cigarette smoke, and the sweat of bodies moving in underground clubs. He meets a man who drifts through the scene like a ghost, his scent a mix of neoprene, leather boots, and something undefinable. Drawn into the city’s after-hours underbelly— where lust and abandon blend into an intoxicating mix —he absorbs the essence of the night. But as he does, he realizes he’s not just capturing that prevalent, sexual scent—he’s losing himself in it. The crap? So, Nocturnality is inspired by a man wanting and lusting after another man. Nah, I'm good. Don't get wrong, I don't have a problem with wearing different fragrances, but given the inspiration behind Nocturnality, I'm not longer interested. I'm disgusted. Edit 1/3/2026: To the people that are so upset with my comment, yes I do own Burning Cherry by Kayali. Again, I have no problem with wearing different fragrances--and I expressed that in the original comment. It's funny how you aim to disrespect and antagonize me for liking a specific fragrance, yet nowhere in my comment did I disrespect, insult or state anything degrading or nasty about Roux or others in their acts. I simply explained that I did not like the inspiration because of the lusting of another man. I was disgusted by the inspiration. Also, I never said that anyone is forcing me to buy anything. Where did I say or imply that someone was forcing me to buy the fragrance? I don't know. And FYI, you cannot be a devoted Christian that truly serves The Lord God AND support a lifestyle that God, himself, does not support. You cannot serve two masters. That's luke warmness according to Revelation 3:15-16. You see, we love people the superior way, according to 1 Corinthians 13, and we show kind, earnest love to people, but we do not support actions or do the very actions that go against God, Our Father. We cannot serve God and Sexual Immorality. For true Christians, please read your Holy Bibles--Leviticus 18:22 of the old testament, which corresponds with Paul's words of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 of the New testament of The New Covenant in which we, as true, devoted Christians unto The Lord Our Father, are living. But nonetheless, peace and love to EVERYONE. May The Lord be with you all. Be blessed. I said what I said. Peace be with you all.🙏🏾🙂

A canned neon energy drink cocktail crushed under the heel of a Jeffrey Campbell boot circa 2013, slick neoprene shine and sculptural platform weight, sticky fluorescent syrup pooling underneath. A stiff pleather jacket draped nearby, late 90s cheap-chic sheen, rubbery and glossy and fruity, an early-evening synthetic glamour. Fluorescent shimmer catching light. Acidic citrus bruised against latex. Chemical gleam mixing with something vaguely floral, a sharp luminosity, its glow all edges. The fruity bits abandon ship, no goodbye, just gone home, shimmied up trellises and through cracked suburban windows, meanwhile, the real party starts. What remains is animalic and feral, musks and patchouli sprawling like they own the place, earthy and musky and undeniably alive, and a little undead in that unsettling way that makes you unsure whether you're smelling something or becoming something. It smells like Dead and Beautiful, a 2021 Chinese vampire film about five gorgeous, obscenely wealthy friends so jaded by excess that they embark on increasingly extravagant and dangerous expeditions just to feel something. After a disorienting encounter with a shaman deep in the jungle, they awaken transformed, vampires...or perhaps the spell merely reveals what was already festering beneath the Valentino and the cheekbones. Cedar grounding the animalic chaos, cool and austere, against the earthy, confrontational patchouli. Something resinous underneath, a smoky, slightly ritualistic quality, like witnessing something you shouldn't in the dark, and then pretending you haven't been changed by it. The aromatic evidence of what happens when beautiful people do beautiful, terrible things. By the end, it's all leather-bound mysteries and the ghost of neon bleeding through, that downtown after-hours underbelly where the loss of self in intoxication becomes indistinguishable from revelation, clinging to skin like a confession or a curse.

@donshan123 Thank you for your comment on this perfume ratings site. It saved me from a life of sin. Before I smelled Nocturnality, I was a respectable heterosexual man with a lovely wife (Gemmafer), two beautiful sons (Axley and Bremt), and an ordinary job at the dumbbell factory. As a masculine man, I loved to sample perfume, so when I got this vial I thought it would be another strong, manly fragrance. But a few whiffs of the smoky animalic leather transmitted the gay demon living inside the bottle into my body and filled me with impure thoughts of the flesh of other men. I divorced my lovely wife and abandoned my beautiful sons and spent my days doused in this perfume, wearing a NastyPig jockstrap in a La Quinta Inn and getting filled up on both ends by an unending procession of anonymous men. It was a very unholy time for me. I had logged on to Fragrantica to leave a rave review, in the hopes that other unsuspecting heterosexual men would be tricked by the same gay perfume demon controlling me. But then, like Gabriel's flaming sword, the holiness of your perfume review cut through the dark haze of Nocturnality and exorcised the sin from my body. How could I have forgotten the Bible? I changed into my button-down, checked out of the La Quinta, and found my way back to Gemmafer, Axley, and Bremt. So thank you, my brother in Christ, for saving my soul from the fire, with your perfume review. Now I only wear perfume designed by and for heterosexual men, like Versace and Tom Ford.

🖤 Berghain 🌅 The darkness is absolute. I see no faces, know no names. Only touch and scent. I step into the stall, the air thick like syrup, humid with sweat and breath. Someone was here moments ago. I feel skin, black and heavy, not from elegant jackets but from lubricants and harnesses. There is a hint of neoprene and latex to the side, barely noticeable. Rubber and latex are not what dominate here, people are. And then the rose hits me. Sweet, floral, absurdly out of place, like a bouquet left in a slaughterhouse. It mixes with something animal, castoreum and civet, heavy and greasy, smelling like the skin of someone with too much testosterone. Resins and styrax smolder somewhere behind, cedar tries to add refinement, though no one here seeks refinement. I walk out into the light. Berlin is waking up, and I smell of someone else’s night. It was wonderful, but nights like this stay unspoken, only the scent remains as proof. @the.scent.files

@donshan Rodrigo Flores Roux is openly gay and nobody is forcing you to buy or wear anything. The perfumer is the boss here, and he has a right to draw inspiration from anything he sees fit. Just like you have a right ignoring his creation if you don't like the inspiration. Don't make us all Christians look like homophobes. Edit : Fraganooga you made me 🤣🤣🤣 "Here comes the big macho "urgh get that gay crap away from me homos!" guy walking around smelling like Lovefest Burning Cherry" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Edit 3/1 : As a "devoted Christian" like you said, I don't judge. I leave that to God. You could have just stopped at "I'm no longer interested" and leave the disgust out of the equation. Because that was a bit harsh if you ask me. Nevertheless, God bless you.

@donshan123 nobody cares and that didn't necessitate all that writing. You have an entire account on a website dedicated to a hobby massively entrenched in LGBT culture in which gay people have probably been responsible for creating 90% of the things within it that you enjoy. Like dude you literally own a Kayali fragrance. Can we be serious. Here comes the big macho "urgh get that gay crap away from me homos!" guy walking around smelling like Lovefest Burning Cherry

@donshan123 wrong platform buddy, take your religious dogmas somewhere dark and warm. @Eppsie1018 how is your view of the world when you're on your knees? Ignoramus. Creatures like these are to be pitied for their minds will never be free. The human beast must embrace his primal impulses and revel in his delicious wickedness. I derive amusement from watching the comment section burn and you, my fellow creatures, did not disappoint. Much appreciated.

I love it, it’s unique and challenging, and reminds me of aerosol bug spray in a way that I actually really love. It would be perfect for a night at the goth club in the deep dark depths of winter, when you step outside to have a cigarette and the sweat from your body evaporates into the cold night, while standing under an orange street light.