Night Flower

It is so incredibly hard to write about something you love. Every time I write reviews on here I get butterflies in my stomach and worry if I'm even making any sense, since obviously the nature of leaving a comment is for the reference of others. I get so anxious and I take weeks before I'm comfortable enough to share my experience. I write endless notes and revise them, erase them, and rewrite them and once satisfied I begin writing my comment here and completely delete the weeks of notes I've taken because I feel my piece has awful cadence. But I think it's time, ready or not, to share my thoughts of Night Flower. University, around 1:30pm sometime in early May, I was walking back to my apartment I had just finished my morning classes. I was 20 years old and remembered having a very modest desk collection of fragrances. As I walked through the neighborhood of single-storied ranch homes towards my apartment I was coming onto a very rich and sweet smell by the sidewalk. I couldn't notice where it was coming from and I had imagined a lady had maybe passed a few minutes ago or just entered her home. But no, the street was entirely empty. The day was temperate, slightly dry with reviving gusts of wind. The most ideal weather for the transport of scent. Your typical early-summer-late-spring day. I finally made it to the floor of the small hill I usually took to get home. As I mounted the top of the hill I finally met the source of that beautifully rich sweet smell. It was a Lilac tree. In full bloom. Hanging just on the side of the someone's front yard, it's limbs low enough for me to hold and sniff like it was waiting to be admired. I was in disbelief that such a beautiful and rich smell could be found in nature much less in someone's yard. I was probably there for 30 minutes just brushing my hands down the clusters of flowers. Anyone watching would have thought I was a lunatic but I wouldn't have cared. I was in my element wishing one day I could find a fragrance that smelled like that moment. It is the weekend and I am in middle school. It is a Saturday and my parents were preparing for a bike trip. On days like this it is usually custom for my folks to make blueberry waffles for breakfast. The air in the house is thick and swirling with fatty, salty, bacon, buttery eggs and fruity blueberry waffles. With Night Flower every time I put it on it's a primal knee-jerk an instinctual flashback that overwhelms my emotions. I become silent and reduced. I am at home... Like that moment from the Disney movie "Ratatouille" where Anton Ego The Food Critic is finally broken and returns to his mother's kitchen. The smell of tuberose is complementary of many other flowers namely, gardenia, tiare, jasmine, lilac, frangipani(plumeria), lily, neroli and orange blossom. All these white flowers are suggestive of one another in their honeyed, nectar-like aspects but do carry their own unique quality's. Tuberose itself can have coconut, banana and almond aspects creamy, green and fatty, suggestive of milk and sweet. When people say tuberose is indolic this is in response to its sulfuric and spicy qualities that can sometimes smell a little ammoniated, more-so accentuated when the flower is wilting and dying. The tell-tale sign that natural tuberose exists in a composition is when it can display both its fruity aspects and its sulfuric aspects. Night Flower is an intoxicating phenom. Now my reference for tuberose and one of the best tuberose fragrances I've smelled along with Moon Bloom, Fougère Emeraude, and Tuberose and Moss all in the camps of such champions as Fracas, Carnal Flower and Fleur Poudrée du Musc. A beautifully cozy and rich Indian tuberose, the noblest of tuberoses in perfumery, that is milky and honeyed. How it is blended in Night Flower with cardamom, cinnamon and boozy patchouli is reminiscent of grapes but more-so of freshly baked blueberry pastries like blueberry pancakes, waffles or muffins. Though not intentionally a gourmand, Night Flower has slight hints of realistic culinary identity. Sweet, warm, comforting and tempting. There is a rich fatty, savory, somewhat suede-like quality that works compatibly with the introduction of the sulfuric facets of the Indian tuberose only to be dressed up properly by cinnamon, rich almond-y tonka bean with vanilla qualities and woody smokey birch keeping it smoothed-out, refined, sexy, woody and sophisticated. With origins from Mexico, tuberoses have expanded to many regions of the world. In India tuberoses are one of the most important ornamental flowers used in many religious ceremonies. A majority of Indian Tuberose is cultivated from the city of Mysore in the state of Karnataka where it is farmed and to a lesser extent in the state of Tamil Nadu. Night Flower in my humble opinion is drugging in its opulence almost to the point of spoiling its wearer. To me a hypnotic composition that can compromise one's balance. Unisex with excellent wear length and polite sillage that blends as an aura over the skin. I have found the fragrance that smells like that moment. To me it is undeniable. It is a masterpiece. My favorite of my Eris Favorites. 🧇🍇🥥💐 10/10

Oh you dirty girl. The kind you meet while crouched in an alley out the back of a nightclub, sucking down ciggies between sets from Sven Vath and Solomun. Eyes like saucers, hair tied back in a messy bun, the faint smell of sweat hanging in the air as the cool night air brushes her glowing skin. I digress. Something I’ve come to appreciate in perfumery is the ability to convey both the devilishly animalic and pure filth, while also building accords that come across as pristine and clean. It’s an act, of course. We all know there’s nothing pure about what’s about to happen, and just like that earlier encounter in the alleyway, things are about to get very carnal. In this instance, the depravity is balanced by something soft and creamy. The absence of sandalwood has me scratching my head as to what it might be, but presumably it’s a combination of the fleshy, buttery petals and lactonic warmth of tuberose, rounded by the plush, almond-like vanilla sweetness of tonka. I don’t know. Everything comes off sweet, laced with lashings of gentle spice. The creaminess flirts with drying out and for a moment I catch little edges that seem to have fallen to dust, but they’re fleeting, whimsical, enough to have me questioning my own nose, whether they were there at all. Any pretence of purity has all but gone, with a fleshy, indolic tuberose absolutely beaming through the opening softness. The musk doesn’t bother trying to play nice and arrives straight up filthy from the outset. It’s dirty, pissy, and everything I love about this style. I’ll be honest, I had to remind myself there was leather here. It’s not evident early, and when it does show up, it’s soft and suede-like, more textural than aromatic, like a big warm, furry hug. This is a stonkingly good perfume. I’m currently in my office and it’s permeating the whole place, coworkers giving me funny looks as they walk by. Maybe they too are reminded of wickedly good nights out, spent sitting in that alleyway with the girl of your dreams, back in the days before we all became boring.

Two of my favorite perfume accords, tuberose and leather, are slapped together in a perfume clearly aiming to be sexy fun. To my nose, Night Flower is more leather and spices forward than tuberose. The leather is the same skank-fest concoction of animalic musks that Antoine Lie deployed at Defcon 1 in Ma Bete, but toned down to conversational levels here. The tuberose comes through as its typical green and white floral, heady and musky self but, again, it's not what Night Flower is centered on; with the spices, cardamom and cinnamon are two that are noticeable, and the patchouli in the base, you could be forgiven for thinking the tuberose is a lot more like carnation. The final skin scent is a dirty and earthy patchouli with hints of tonka bean. This isn't some pretty little flower of your garden, stumbled upon in the darkness of night. This is someone daring, carnal, and sexy slinking around your bedroom; you're nervous because you smell the leather but you don't see it. What sort of surprise awaits you, and are you ready for it. Does Night Flower allow for a safe word?

I debated for awhile if I loved Night Flower and today I decided that I do. And that’s saying quite a lot since suede, the most dominant note in the composition, is often a problematic note for me. Here suede is presented in a warm, complex and smooth composition. If the feeling of comfort had a smell it would be Night Flower. I agree that their are similarities to Shalimar. But I also think Night Flower—with its beautiful powdery Tuberose flower—stands on its own. There’s a vintage quality to Night Flower, but it’s also sexy as all get out. There’s nothing off putting or dated in the bottle. And just when I swore off buying anymore Tuberose scents (I have many), along comes this mighty beast. Luckily the flower is mixed with spices and is not a bubblegum or heady perfume scent. Did I say that performance is stellar?

Night Flower, fantastic opening, slightly masculine vibe, aromatic, sexy. Has a slight vintage feel to it but equally modern. Hefty amount of patchouli but not particular earthy or dirty, blends in with the other notes harmoniously without screaming "patchouli!!" although very present. I was not expecting to like this as much as I do, but it's high on my want list. I don't find it overly complex but I do find it perfectly blended. It has almost an ever so slight Musc Ravageur feeling. It doesn’t smell “like” it but reminds me of it for some reason. This is my first sampling from Eris and I'm very intrigued and looking forward to the other two. Big thumbs up from me!