The Night

MASTERPIECE WITH A CATCH ..... let me explain why. (Review after using this perfume for 6 months) I would like to start off saying that this perfume is Overhyped but rightly so and there is a reason why this fragrance is overhyped. It’s a combination of YouTubers who got free bottles and the sheer beauty and elegance of this perfume combined. The night has simple composition but its still very complex in its nature, the ingredients used in this perfume are basically Assam Oud, Rose, Saffron, Incense & Patchouli, but the blending of this perfume is on another level, hats off to the perfumer Mr Ropion and his team who created this masterpiece. This perfume will be an all time coveted gem for Oud & Rose lovers. This is middle eastern perfumery handcrafted to perfection in my view and the sheer beauty and elegance of this perfume is probably one of the best in class. There comes to a time for a perfume connesuier’s journey, that even niche perfumery does not impress him and things like this perfume industry does. **About the scent profile:** This perfume starts off with Indian Oud which has been fermented, this Oud note is beautiful if you are used to smelling Indian oud or familiar with Dehnal Oud attars then you are in for a treat, after 30 - 45 mins approximately, the beautiful rose kicks in and this combination of this rose and oud is to die for, its an absolutely amazing combination when done correctly. Even though this Rose and oud combination has been done to oblivion this one kicks arse and is probably a the end game boss of Rose oud saga and I am taking about NG+++ end game of Rose and Oud done. The dry down is also very reminiscent of a rose where it has been wedged inside an old book, and you get this dusty, dry rose with a woody backbone, it reminds me of old times, where a boy gives a rose to a girl and she keeps in her favourite book and that rose dries down but still retains its dusty rose smell. The mid stages is faintly similar to an amped up portrait of a lady and at the later stages of the perfume and I am talking about 6 - 7 hours the pachouli, incense and Oud is prominent but not overpowering. The master-craft of this perfume is when you can experience the different layers of this perfume where the transitions from the top, mid and base is done flawlessly, there is a reason Sir Dominic Ropion is a master perfumer because unlike French perfumery where there is instant gratification with the smell of the perfume, this is a middle eastern perfume crafted by a very gentle hand and a highly refined nose, when you apply it you need to let it do its thing and not sniff it straight away because middle eastern perfumery is about the journey which you experience. I have tried a sample of the old batch and the current batch, this perfume is absolutely amazing when it was in the earlier release dates, all the YouTubers who got their free bottles are correct that this perfume lasts easily 24 + hours and has a great projection for the first few hours. However there is a catch, if you buy the current batches, its tone down with the projection, currently from my testing of the 2023 batch, this perfume is strong for the first 1 - 2 hours, but it quickly becomes a scent bubble for the entirety of the life of this perfume. My recommendation would be to apply it on clothes about 3 - 5 sprays and it will give you a similar experience with the old batch with 2 - 3 sprays, don’t take my word for it, see if you can get a sample and apply 1 spray on skin and 1 on clothes, time it and compare it for yourself. Perfumes like the night and similar fragrances deserve a case study in detail because here in Australia it can cost upwards of $2000 + and the unique thing to study about this fragrance is when they have reformulated this fragrance and what causes this fragrance to sit close to the skin while the older batches of this fragrance had a very strong opening, mid and base. The night’s composition works like middle eastern perfumery at the start till 2 hours, later it acts like French perfumery, this can not happen with ordinary perfumes, this is a sign of master perfumery and the beautiful transitions, The very end stages of this perfume which is after 20 hours or so, you will experience the pachouli which is very much similar to the pachouli used in Portrait of a lady, the oud has become dusty and woody but very subtle along with the rose. Longevity for this perfume is more than 24 hours on clothes. This is truly a masterpiece of a perfume but here the centre of attraction is the Perfumer with the way he has made this perfume, because there are a ton of rose & oud perfume in the market but what you pay here for is the craftsmanship and the different transitions of this perfume, this is the end journey of your perfumery, if you fall in love with this one then every other perfume would be judged by a very high standard. Closing thoughts If I had to spend this kind of money on this perfume at the moment, then I would spend it on a very high quality Dehnal Oud attar first , a high quality rose oil and saffron and layer it together and this would have been my opinion after owning this bottle after a month, however the more I wore it after resetting my olfactory senses by not wearing any perfume for a week, I truly understood the elegance and magnificence of this perfume, I tried this perfume treating it like a middle eastern perfume where you apply it and dont sniff it straight away like french perfumes, the perfume blooms incredibly amazingly and its more about the journey with this fragrance than the instant gratification perfumes with so many perfumes these days. This is a masterpiece and if you can afford to buy it, then I would highly recommend to get it and you are in for a journey because this perfume you wear it for yourself and not because you want others to appreciate it and in my opinion this perfume is like poetry when you understand its depth you appreciate for what it stands for. Regards, Sam

This is as addicting in the later stages as it is repulsive in the early stages. The first time I got to try this in a niche store in my hometown and as this store is like a playground for me, I tend to just spray a bunch of interesting fragrances until I cannot smell a thing anymore and everything smells the same. Then I complain about everything smelling the same and I leave. This stood out. I could smell this, even after spraying all these other fragrances. What I was able to smell I absolutely did not like, so I quickly dismissed it as "never again" and moved on to other fragrances, which I thought would suit my taste better. A while later I came back and for some reason decided to give it a try again. Not only that - I also kept the sample card inside my pocket and only got it back out when I was at home, hours later. What I smelled then, convinced me much more. So much in fact, that I gave it another try and got inspired to write this review. The opening is anything but pleasant, not only to me, but also to most friends I gave this to. It's pungent, it's strong, personally I get a lot of civet notes although I'm not sure if that is just the skanky Oud. It almost has a sour smell to it and although not fully fecal, it's certainly challenging and completely unpleasant to many people, including myself. I get this weird combination of Civet, skanky Oud, sourness and some floral elements that remind me of a very strong 80s style French floral that many people will find "too much", "weird" or even "grandma"-ish smelling. This strong and strange opening will most certainly steer many people away from this and if your nose has never experienced anything like it, you might even feel offended by it, dismissing this as disgusting and weird, while not understanding why anyone would like this, how this can possibly called a perfume and what the point of this is. In the early drydown this evolves into something completely different - it smells Oudy, woody, very elegant, pleasant, even soft. I even get some soapy qualities from it, almost smelling as if you used Oud oil and then put some soapy scent on top, or you used Oud oil and then took a quick shower. The occasional funk does still appear, however only rarely and much more bearable than in the opening, it plays with your nose and it's almost a bit interesting and pleasant as it gives you a perspective on how much this scent evolves. The intermediate noses might find this fragrance too much, not very pleasant but they give credit to the blend, the ingredients and they see its' place in the fragrance market and while they don't like this or would want to own this, they do understand why people find this intriguing. The late drydown doesn't change significantly anymore, and this is where it gets interesting anymore. The funk disappears, you're left with a beautiful, very natural, Oudy-woody scent that smells quite magical. If you've ever been to a country where Oud is more present culturally, you will recognize this. It smells like malls in Dubai, like burning Oud in Indonesia, like a piece of Oud Wood that some random fragrance enthusiast held under your nose for you to smell. It smells like nature, like a starry night outside in a warm country, like a rich sheikh who uses Oud oil so much that it almost becomes part of his natural skin smell. It soft, yet very long lasting. It's not complex, in fact it's quite the simple blend, and yet it has something completely unique and different to it. The problems emerge when we talk about the price. Frederic Malle has never been a cheap house and The Night is no exception. 1150 Euros for 100ml is not only steep, it's completely exorbitant, borderline ridiculous, and after diving deeply into this and almost falling in love with it, I quickly had to stop, clear my mind and ask myself where this price tag comes from. The blend is simple, the presentation is decent but not as opulent as, let's say, Roja and while ingredients must play some factor here, I cannot help but wonder if this skanky Oud, especially from the beginning, can be so expensive to justify such a price. I do have to admit that I'm nowhere near an expert in Oud and it is a complex subject to master, however from my understanding the skank and funk usually comes from bacteria "infesting" the Oud, making it essentially less valuable than the very high grade ones. Not worthless - nowhere near it, but also not so expensive to justify almost 1200 Euros a bottle. So I'm left a bit torn. I do love this and if you get past the opening, this is fantastic, I'd even argue that many people would love this in the mid to late drydown and many people wouldn't even understand how this could have such a challenging opening after only smelling the drydown. It is beautiful, the ingredients are without a doubt expensive, however 1200 Euros is very hard to justify and I would most likely much rather reach for something else. Roja? Possibly. Maybe a bunch of Amouages? A whole lot of middle eastern Ouds? Heck, even Oud oil or Henry Jacques if you're feeling fancy? All of these will probably set you back less than this. The only way to buy this, in my opinion, is either through some very good grey market deals or if you're ridiculously rich.

It seems to me that the five entries into Frederic Malle's Desert Gems line, The Night, The Dawn, Promise, Hope, and The Moon, are meant to be the brand's attempt to set the new and final benchmark for Oriental/Arabian oud perfumes done in a Western style. I'm not sure that I could argue he hasn't achieved the goal. They are certainly some of, if not the best, Western-bent Oriental/Arabian ouds I have smelled in a very long time. Of the four I have been able to wear and spend time with, The Moon being as-yet, The Night is probably my favorite. As far as I can tell with the four I've worn, none of the Desert Gems are treading terra incognita. They are simply masterfully done using deft execution by some of the best perfumers with the best materials they can lay their hands on. It shows. It also shows in the price tag, for that matter. What the Desert Gems seem to have creatively achieved is the special ability to place an image firmly and clearly in your mind's eye. Abstraction has its place, but many of history's great perfumes are quite literal; it takes tremendous talent to create something that most everyone who smells it sees the same image in their mind. This is why The Night is my favorite. Its evocation of the pitch-black sky of night meeting the dark-orange-turning-onyx sands of the desert, stripped of golden light by absence of the sun, is chillingly accurate. This is achieved by removing nearly all of the "heat" and "wetness" from the oud accord. Whatever material Malle and Ropion agreed to use is exceptional. It is so smooth, seamless, and easily wearable - which altogether are difficult characteristics for oud to have. It's much easier to present oud in all of its funky, animalic, porous, jagged, sharp, woody, turned-fruit glory. The opening notes of rose and saffron certainly help tee-up the oud for this effect. The saffron lacks any warm and sweet qualities and instead presents itself as hay-like and floral. The very gentle rose note is also not a warm and sweet red rose, but a dry and cold pink rose. They work together brilliantly. Buttressing the massive oud is a base of very dry amber and smokey frankincense that also fills in the "holes" of the oud accord very well, giving it that seamless quality like an expanse of desert in the night that stretches on for eternity. In the final dry down, the amber and smokey frankincense is like the near-dead embers of a wood fire in the desert: cool, and getting colder still, the aromatic smokey fragrance of the burnt desert wood lingering in the air. Again, and therefore, I have to detract from many of my fellow enthusiasts here in describing this perfume as warm, a quality we always expect of ouds and ambers. Think of Dior's Leather Oud, a smoldering cauldron of near impenetrable heat, and this is inarguably the exact opposite of that (and no leather as well, that I can tell). Once you smell warm-to-hot oud, you recognize that The Night is not one. Like a cold and dry desert night it behaves that way on skin too, reinforcing the point. It's a balmy spring day here in California, and normally I wouldn't dare wear an oud of this type in this weather for fear of suffocating myself and others for miles around - but not The Night. It is remarkably well behaved and restrained because of its cool and dry character. It would definitely be ill-advised to wear this in the high heat of the summer, but a cool summer night? Certainly. With a bit more heat and humidity it might even be magical. To this point though, for people going to wear it for the first time, start with two sprays, wait, and then go from there if need be; just like a desert at night, its enormity of size can easily overwhelm. Final thoughts: while I said the Desert Gems don't really have anything new to say about the Oriental/Arabian oud genre, then went on to say how nice it was to have a cold and dry oud for once, again though, that's nothing new - and that's fine. We don't need a new perfume trying to rewrite the book every week. The Night is meant to give you a picture of the cool desert under a black sky and to achieve this with a brilliant blending hand and excellent materials. It does this, and it does so extremely well. What an amazing piece of work.

I wrote a review on this a while back but was unfortunately going from a mis-labelled sample. Now that I have smelled what I know to be the real The Night I must concur with what (almost) everyone below has been saying - on one's first time wearing, this comes off as animalic and fecal to stratospheric levels. It is without any disrespect to the fragrance or to Hindi oud as a material that I can say this unequivocally shares a lot of olfactory space with farmlands, livestock and yes, manure. It is a nuke of uncompromising egesta - something which I suspect should make many fragrance fanatics water at the mouth. However, on repeated wearings the subtleties of this fragrance rapidly become apparent, the fecal connotations do (believe it or not) fall away: The Night seems very shocking when first applied, but like most ouds it very quickly adapts to skin and, whilst still retaining its animalic nature, it quickly slithers into the incredibly black, woody, earthy and pseudo mint-like note which positively glows with a dark aura. I love this quality of the scent, and it is very easy to get if one can put aside connotations with excrement for just a moment. It becomes dense, rumbling and huffing with this strange dark-yet-glowing smell and then, quite unexpectedly, a crimson rose opens up and the resultant oud-rose dyad continues on and on like an ocean of bloody petals. The drama of the scent is very difficult to overstate - it's operatic, loud and brazen but floral and intoxicating at the same time. Beyond the appreciation of most, it's almost alien in how utterly strange it is, even when compared to many other natural oud-roses, this just hits an entirely new level. It's a frenzy of oud and rose petals which, once applied, never ever seems to fade or die on the skin. Despite its challenging nature, this stalwart longevity (and the rich red rose) do give the scent a strong companion-like feel, something to be kept for one's own narcotic, filthy pleasure. I'm not sure I can go so far as to cede this as wearable in public - I'd have to try it out but I do worry I'd end up killing someone. If you want to plunge into a sea of infinite darkness and don't mind creeping over a few bombs to get there - this fragrance is for you and it lives on skin for over a day and on clothes indefinitely (until washed). While I do think I probably prefer Promise, I still think this is the greatest achievement for Frederic Malle! Little update: Oud Maximus by Bortnikoff is extremely similar to The Night, for those who are interested but don't want to break the bank!

There have been several tributes to deep oriental fragrances by the world's finest perfume houses in the last two decades. Frederic Malle launched four perfumes with Arabic labels, namely The Night, Dawn, Promise and The Moon. With list prices ranging from €225 (10 ml) to €2200 (250 ml), The Night can hardly be called an affordable perfume. Malle claims that the best available raw materials have been used to achieve the best possible perception of an oud perfume. I can question that, at least with regard to the oud distillation process that has been used. The Night oud note is just to barnyardy for a top-quality oud oil. This perfume is a powerful oud and rose fragrance with saffron flavours, an incense frame and an oud and sandalwood base. The Turkish rose scent is clearly perceptible in the top notes, as are nuances of saffron. But the oud in the heart sets the pace and creates an animalic and leathery foul ambience. Frankincense can also be detected in the background. The sandalwood only becomes more evident later and during the dry down phase. Is The Night fiery and dark? Yes, it is, but only in a mild way if you are used to Middle Eastern oud scents. I think newcomers to these dense, woody oud scents will find it intrusive or even "barnyard" to say the least. People who test it with me, complain of a faecal smell. You won't find any sweetness to soften the initial scent conflict for your senses. Be prepared to enjoy "The Night" for a long time. Don't use more than two sprays. It will last for more than 12 hours and will be reasonably shower-proof. The good news is that when it dries down, the scent is heavenly. I have already used this perfume four times in the last week. Although I am a lover of intense (aggressive?) oriental perfumes, I realise that "The Night" will at least evoke mixed feelings in the opening phase. I am sure that many users will hate it. The good news is that I can really feel the perfume growing inside me with each (very expensive) puff from the atomiser. Can I say that I really love it now? Yes, I can! Can I say that my wife still hates it? Yes, I surely can! My opinion: Beware of the initial stale smell in your nose. I learned to love The Night only after using it a few times. It's semi-dark, dense, and after thirty minutes the oud becomes wonderful while the strong Turkish rose is still there. The finish is quite fantastic and the power is tremendous. For its price, however, the perfume should be kept in a bank safe. Never buy it blindly.