Magie Noire Parfum

Moonlight And Magic In A Dark Forest Magie Noire The Black Magic Perfume I purchased a vintage Magie Noire miniature in the crescent moon shaped or shell-shaped splash Eau de Parfum. It dates from the time of the fragrance's release 1978 or between 1978 and 1983. And let me tell you this is the most hauntingly beautiful fragrance of the night ever made. Magie Noire was formulated by Gerard Goupy for Lancome. At the time, the biggest selling fragrance was Opium by Yves Saint Laurent. Women bought it like crazy, as it was the defining fragrance of the 1970's. It epitomized drugs, sex and decadence. It was advertised as a perfume that gets you high, that puts you in the mood to put on your sexiest most provocative clothes and go to Studio 54 and dance and get high to your heart's content. Surely Opium's fragrance made it into Studio 54. But Magie Noire came out at about the same time and became a sort of alternative to Opium. Whereas Opium was selling as a recreational drug perfume, Magie Noire was a magic potion. Lancome was not as luxurious a brand as Yves Saint Laurent, but it was no less French as it produced cosmestic and fragrances during the 60's. Today it exists as L'Oreal. So Magie became an evening fragrance selling not to the wealthy Vogue magazine fashionista crowds, but to suburban middle class mothers. This is what a teacher would wear, or a secretary, receptionist or even dental assistant or nurse - on her night out on a romantic date. Magie is pure magic. But like all good classic frags, it has been reformulated and exists in different versions. You have the original vintage from 1978. This one comes in a black plastic box and is a minature, usually about a one fourth ounces. The colors are black and orange, but I noticed that it appears to glow in the dark! The stopper is shaped like a small mushroom and made of glass as is the whole bottle. The liquid is actually lime green but turns orange when exposed to bright lights. There were two reformulations. In the 80's, beginning around 1982 and selling through 1989, there was an eau de toilette spray. This one is black and yellow with the liquid being a pale yellow and the spray's stopper looking like Darth Vader's helmet. This one is very similar to the vintage, except it's lighter and less concentrated. It sold very well in the 80's and was wearable even as a casual day time frag. The last reformulation is a larger size spray glass bottle with no real charm or distinctive qualities and has nothing in common with either the parfum or toilette. It is dreadful and has lost any of the characteristics of the original. So if you want to experience the "black magic" all over again, buy the vintage parfum and toilette. They sell on amazon.com and on ebay but you'll have to bid on auctions for the vintage and pay upwards to or over 50-70 even 90 bucks. For some people who are on a budget, this is too much to pay for a fragrance, and one that is considered a vintage. I adore vintages and love to collect them. So you have to be a fan of vintages to be excited about Magie. This was indeed a magic perfume, and it cast it's spell. Magie Noire was advertised on television twice. The original 1978 ad shows a woman in a dark black gown summoning lighting and thunder and out of the flash of light emerges the miniature perfume crescent moon shaped bottle. The other TV ad (in the 80's) shows a woman in a white gown descending a large staircase in a mansion, and looking out into a long view of green gardens with a breeze blowing over the gossamer curtains. This ad was for the eau de toilette. Magie Noire sold very well in it's time. It is one of two fragrances that make a cameo in the 1988 movie WORKING GIRL starring Melanie Griffith Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver. The mini Magie Noire sits on Katharine's dresser as she takes some valium to calm her nerves when she discovers the dress she is about to wear that belongs to her boss costs 6 thousand dollars, and it "ain't even leather". The other fragrance that appears in this film is Guerlain's Shalimar, when Kathy applies it on her skin while seated on her bed. Magie Noire will truly fulfill your craving for a vintage. It has stood the test of time as a beloved fragrance. NOTES IN LANCOME'S MAGIE NOIRE Head Notes: Cassis, Cassia, Raspberry, Galbanum, Hyacinth, Bergamot, Bulgarian Rose Heart Notes: Honey, Tuberose, Orris Root, Jasmine, Ylang Ylang, Lily of the Valley, Cedar, Narcissus, Base Notes: Spices, Sandalwood, Amber, Patchouli, Musk, Civet, Oak Moss, Vetiver, Myrrh Incense This is a rich, heavily layered perfume. With this many notes, it's hard to single out each one, and there are some that don't even bother to make an olfactory cameo. Of the top notes I do get the green notes of galbanum, cassis and cassia. It's like slowly entering into a forest where you see a lot of green plants and green leaves. But you're still in the safe part of the forest and it hasn't even gotten dark yet. There is supposed to be a red rose (Bulgarian Rose) but I wish I had been able to smell it. To my nose there was no rose or the rose had already wilted. You keep smelling and smelling and the progression is frightening. Suddenly you're getting deeper and deeper into the dark forest. There is no sunlight and it's completely dark. A crescent moon sheds a silvery beam of light over the dark foliage. What I found to be the most prominent note of all was patchouli. This is a real green patchouli, and it's layered with amber, musk and incense. The incense is like black smoke. These notes are found in the base notes. It makes the fragrance very powerful indeed. There is also leather but it's not listd in the notes. The dark leather gives it a cool elegance, but combined with the musk and patchouli, makes it somewhat greasy and oily. Other notes that don't seem to be listed but which have to be in here include asafetida, used in medicine and Indian cooking. There is ferula and galbanum. This appears to make the fragrance smell as if it were extremely toxic, poisonous and very evil. This fragrance reminds me of Greek mythology. It made me think of Circe in the Odyssey who was a ravishingly beautiful witch who seduces Odysseus (Ulysses) and turns his men into pigs. It also brings to mind the John Keats poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy, a romanticized depiction of Death as a very beautiful woman who lures a gallant knight into her arms of death. It also seems to wear like a fragrance for The Evil Queen in Snow White, who was very beautiful but vain and with an ugly heart. It's a fragrance for the evil sorceress Morgana Le Faye who was King Arthur's own sister in the Arthurian legends of Camelot. This is a fragrance of beautiful witches and enchantresses. The fumes gave me visions of a crescent moon, a dark forest, and of a man trapped in the woods, caught in the tendrils of climbing plants and vines. He is the victim of a magic spell, a woman who has lured him into her fatal embrace. This is absolutely beautiful. Gothic. Dark. Mysterious. It's a fragrance you should wear only once in a while, for Halloween, or for a romantic night out, an evening formal fragrance. You can definitely wear this with black clothes: black leather, black coats, black dresses and black evening gowns. This is like somthing Anjelica Huston would wear (think of her in the role of the Grand High Witch in The Witches or Morticia Addams in The Addams Family/AddamsFamily Values ). This is a perfume Morticia Addams would wear. When I wore this fragrance for the first time to test it out and how it smells to others, a guy friend said it smells like the "80's", like the inside of a woman's leather handbag in the 80's. It has a lot of leather and as such smells like something that could also be worn by a woman who is into black leather outfits, jackets, even a motorcyclist. This has a lot of patchouli that still sells big and is favored by the young crowds of today. So don't look at this frag as "old lady" or "vintage old" it's wearable in our time because of the patchouli. And the patchouli on here is very large. So is the civet, the animalic note, but don't let that scare you. It makes the frag warm and cozy, and with the honey in this it adds a lot of warmth. It's definitely a fall and winter fragrance. In the spring and summer this fragrancee would not smell as good. This is such an enchanting fragrance. It affected me deeply and I love it but can't wear it out too often. This one is a special perfume, a magic potion to be used only on the right ocassion. I must tell you that this frag's leathery and musky aroma is totally unisex. This can smell just as good on a man. I love it. You'll love it too. But I would not recommend this as your first fragrance or a blind buy. You can't jump from Coco Chanel Mademoiselle Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker Wonderstuck by Taylor Swift or Paris Hilton Tease or any other celebrity fragrance light skin scents big on sugary sweetness. This is not even much of a floral fragrance. If it had to be classified I would put it under the category of FLORAL CHYPRE. The flowers and raspberry accords are muted but make a brief apperance before overwhelmed by the darknes of woods, incense and patchouli and civet. The wood notes on here: sandalwood, cedar, oak, make it a chypre. But it's not an Oriental at all. It's a straight out chypre. Let Magie work it's magic on you and unleash the darkness and the night in the most beautiful, elegant way possible.

When I was young, there was an expanse of bramble bushes that in the summer heat, as the berries ripened, would transform the air with a bittersweet, tart balm. It was this, along with the surrounding vegetation, that resulted in a scent memory that is just as vivid today in my mind. I recall the fruits in different stages of maturity, bright magenta to a deep black. Careful to avoid the thorns, I'd pick them and eat them one by one, hands stained with juice. The opening of Magie Noire parfum, its piercing green galbanum, blackcurrant, and raspberry, remind me of the summer blackberry air long ago. Then Magie Noire recalls even more, it haunts me as it progresses, like the darker corners of the woods, when in solitude, I am greeted only by the sound of the trilling pine warbler, the plangent repeat of the ovenbird, and my favorite, that of the hermit thrush, with its otherworldly melody. I still hug trees as I did as a child, I still turn over rocks to see what lurks underneath, I still look very closely at decaying tree trunks and marvel at the smallest organisms, trying as best as I can to enter their world, or at least imagine that I can. The green of the foliage begins to glow as I look at it long enough, and that is the sensation I feel here, glowing green foliage, bitter and flowing with phloem. Entering the forest further, where the sunlight struggles to reach the understory, this is where the most unusual flora grows, organisms like myco-heterotrophic plants: ghost pipes, pinedrops, snowplants. I imagine that Magie Noire would be the fragrance if any of them had one. Now dusk approaches, and to be caught in the woods so late is the most exhilarating rush of fear and adrenaline, but also of magic. What a time to shovel one's hands through dry pine straw, through into the earth, and to see the sky grow dimmer by the minute. There is this point here where Magie Noire smells of honey, earth, and camphor, and the thickest, densest, most impossible moss cushion. If you've ever really dug your hands into the forest floor, there is that loamy, fermented quality that I imagine only the most devoted forest scouts can admire. I sense it here. There is the scent of grape must, inedible red berries that when you squeeze give off a peculiar astringent order, the underside of a mushroom, plucked and withered lily of the valley, long dried out roses. Then there is a myrrh oil imprint on my skin, with some vetiver and a smell that I would describe as castoreum-scented incense. It's as if I've made my way home before nightfall digs its heels into the ground, and I am left reflecting on the blackberry day and the forest sundown. This gives me the same haunting, temporal synesthesia as that of Yatagan, Aliage, or Devin, where it feels profoundly familiar, profoundly like home, but my neurons can't articulate the sensation and I certainly fail to translate it into the written word. Yes, that is how weird I really am, and thank you for your time reading my weird description of this perfume. Night night. [This is based on the original 78-83 version parfum that I own]

For October this is the fragrance to wear. At least it is for me. It's become a yearly tradition with me as I dress up as Morticia Addams and decorate my townhome in a haunted house Addams house theme. This is a witchy mysterious smoky leathery sexy fragrance that far surpasses it's 'niche' mode. I have had this perfume many years but the one you have to experience is not the EDT but the EDP dab on in the black miniature case and glass bottle shaped like a mushroom or shell. A piece of nostalgia as it was in the same league as YSL Opium. The initial notes are sweet raspberry and cassia-cassis which when I first wore it was hard to detect. There's a Bulgarian roses which matches up with the sweet berry. This portion of the fragrance is deceptively sweet and evocative of forest berries. Makes me think of the entrance to a forest inviting you with the sweet scent of berry. Or think the sweet gingerbread house belonging to the Witch in Hansel and Gretel. The allure of a feminine woman with long hair and roses and berries, an enchantress, Circe from the Odyssey. She opens her arms in an embrace but the closer you get to her the dark side emerges. So many amazing notes just not found in a single perfume today that is all in one - galbanum patchouli oak moss civet leather incense myrrh sandalwood ambergris and vetiver. Quite a powerful aroma. Galbanum green and earthy with oak moss musky civet and incense, myrrh, dark woods, and patchouli await you as you inhale the fragrance deeply. This is a giant patchouli to me, aromatic, herbal, and what with the toxic tuberose and indolic jasmine and everything, this is a dangerous type of floral. Think Dior Poison. In fact this can be worn by those of us who wear Poison. As it dries down it reveals a black leather and a touch of powdery iris. It's oily and very potent, like a witch's brew. This stuff can fill up an entire house so apply with caution. I do love to smell of it so I splash myself all over with it. This fragrance has always touched me deeply. I love it and enjoy wearing it every October. I wish that it was more well known and I feel it suffers from being underrated. This is such a gorgeous unisex fragrance which both males and females should enjoy. This has incredible longevity and atomic sillage. It is a real perfume made of essential and authentic extracts. This is a rarity nowadays and as such I appreciate it's value. Smells wonderful and makes you feel powerful. This fragrance has everything. And it evokes not only Morticia Addams, but all the Disney witches from the Evil Queen in Snow White to Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, not to mention real people such as Maila Nurma AKA Vampira the Hollywood actress with her own late night movie TV show BEFORE Elvira Mistress of the Dark, and of course it's great for wearing while you wear your Halloween costumes of vampires and witches.

I have dab-on perfume bottles that look just like this photo on Fragrantica. I bought them at an independent vintage perfume store. They come in a black plastic case with Magie Noire on gold letters on it. The bottle has a stand in black crescent shape. Magie Noire is so beautiful. What I first feel or sense when I dab it on my skin, is something so out of this world and unusual, kind of like the vibes I get from Mugler's Alien. Nothing like this today selling at Macy's! This is not some sweet gourmand or cutesy floral. This is a powerful scent; a full bodied floral chypre and mossy-animalic. I can detected the raspberry and rose plus lily of the valley, iris, hyacinth and green notes when it is on me for the first minute or two. It comes off as briefly sweet and feminine, with fruity-berry and rose floral notes including white jasmine and tuberose. This tuberose is creamy and as big as the ones that would be signatures in the 1980s. There is galbanum and other green accords. There's something oily and warm. Before long the florals have exited. The iris gave it a powdery aura but it doesn't get too talc powdery. Instead the dry down turns warm and mossy, smoky, and musky. I have to really keep smelling deep into the fragrance to pick up on things that make up the fixatives holding the whole thing together - civet, leather, resins, amber, sandalwood, some other kind of wood like cedar, incense, myrrh, patchouli and oak moss. This is quite smoky and dark, rich, and exotic. Smells expensive and if this was a dress it would have either velvet or leather fabric. This is a perfume of the night. It's for a confident and alluring woman who is bold, intelligent, sexy and sophisticated. Very few women who are used to wearing today's scents i.e. Coco Mademoiselle, Victoria Secret, etc can pull off that look but it seems to suggest an accomplished and very womanly woman. For example, I can see Anjelia Huston all over this perfume. It's got a witch potion aura but in a very sexy way. Dark woods, moss, night blooming flowers, incense and civet. The perfume is a bomb and lasts a long time. 2 days long. The warmth is suited to winter and fall. It's a nocturnal and seductive scent for the woman who wants to make a statement and seduce not only with 'what is that interesting and unique scent? kind of way but in her personality which matches the mystery of this perfume. It's mysterious, and exotic, intellectual and Gothic. Totally a Goth can get away with it even in high school. Best way to experience this perfume is the EDP which is the dab on bottles selling on ebay from authentic owners of the vintage original. The EDT spray is a messed up reformulation.

Magie Noire is a subtle wonder. It’s not very strong, but it’s unbelievably complex and ever-shifting. It’s officially listed as an oriental, but it feels more like a chypre, dominated by the bitter-dark forest floor notes of oakmoss and patchouli. We’re in “grown-ass woman in Diane von Furstenburg wrap dress” territory here — it’s a late-seventies perfume, and has that Anne Bancroft, wry, self-possessed vibe I like so much. Same genre as Aromatics Elixir, Knowing, Paloma Picasso, even Aliage. But Magie Noire is special in a number of ways. First of all it has a true, almost fresh green top, thanks to the cassis and galbanum and a very judicious use of the raspberry (tart, not sweet). So it’s not all forest floor; there’s also some bright-green foliage. The galbanum feels natural here, a point of peridot light set among shades of olive and loden. Second of all, the myrrh and incense and spices really make the base deep and dark in a way that even Paloma Picasso isn’t. There’s no mention of castoreum or leather in the notes but I seem to smell something like that too — a dark-brown, rich animalic, not just the high beige hiss of civet around the edges. The “noir” is almost reminiscent of a 21st century niche “dark” incense perfume, except without the harsh smokiness and chemical edge you get all too often. There’s no discernible sweetness for me, just deep, dark, mysterious depths that feel richly smooth going down. Magie Noire may actually be the ultimate dark, witchy chypre for me. Some chypres use the oakmoss base as a dark-green-velvet backdrop to set off a sweet, bold floral (like Knowing did for rose and Paloma Picasso for hyacinth) while others are kind of monochrome (Aromatics Elixir is just greeny-brown herbal-woody notes; Bandit is dominated by the overwhelming bitterness of pure black leather, with chartreuse galbanum highlights.) Magie Noire is neither; it’s iridescent. It keeps shimmering between sparkling greens and rich incensey depths, with no sweet “easy” notes, just an endlessly twirling kaleidoscope of bitterness, darkness, spiciness, freshness, and radiance. At last it settles into a sepia-brown, oakmoss-and-myrrh base, as solid and reassuring as a cup of black coffee.