Amour Nocturne

THIS IS LOVELY . Review of official carded sample and then original, gold cap bottle (they smell identical)- THIS is what I thought BACK TO BLACK By Kilian was going to smell like! On my skin I get smokey, honey carmel with a darkness that stays silky smooth at every step. SO Sexy! THIS is more befitting of the memory of Amy Winehouse! (Rather than the sickly sweet honey without any grunge or depth that was my experience with B2B.) THIS wonderful creation brings to mind classic winged eyeliner, a tough leather jacket, and a gun... target practice in the woods with a flask of honey whiskey after. (Which might be unreasonably special to me considering I'm an Alaskan). An intriguing, sweet, seductive scent with a note of danger. Perfectly unisex. Completely addictive. Sweetness with an edge speaks to my soul and AMOUR NOCTURNE calls to me. P.S. Full bottle is on the way. Due to the unique composition I will try this as a signature scent but will have to find a place for it to shine. This is richly layered and intriguing, it would garner too much attention to be professional. This might be best during off hours. Will update. UPDATE Even my 4-year-old niece, who is my harshest critic when it comes to fragrances, really likes this one and says it's "yum". Pairs perfectly with black leather jackets which are staples in my wardrobe. Bought a back-up bottle. NOTE I'm not sure why this is compared to T.F. BLACK ORCHID as I find that one to be a patchouli bomb and this one has NO PATCHOULI at all (thank-goodness). This also has very strong smoke and honey notes that are completely missing in BLACK ORCHID. Though I can understand why they could inspire a similar rebelious mood. I totally agree with PeachK, this does NOT resemble Tokyo Milk Dark BULLETPROOF, although that is another one I enjoy. It's an unusual scent that has a bit of a bite or bitterness to balance out the sweetness while successfully staying smooth. If you like that one you might also enjoy this one. PERFORMANCE NOTE Speaking of lasting power, I can still smell it on my skin when I wake up in the morning, which can be 10-12 hours after I put it on. I wonder if the original, gold cap bottles have better longevity than the newer style black ones. Mine are the gold cap, special edition, shorter/rounder yellow glass bottles from the Explosions d'Emotions collection, before they added AMOUR NOCTURNE to their main line. Hope this helps. I have not tried the current formulation in the black bottles.

This was a blind buy and I could not be more happy. Ever since I smelled ELDO's Fin Du Monde, I determined that gunpowder was a unique note that I liked a lot and needed more of. It lacks the BBQ or incense element a lot of smoky fragrances have. Too many times I was drawn into trying a perfume because it listed smoke as a note, but just got artificial bacon or backyard smoker. On me, Amour Nocturne opens with cedary pencil shavings that are immediately balanced with an unobtrusive flower and milky, salted caramel. I like when flowers play a supporting or tandem role rather than trying to steal the show. The gunpowder is subtle, but still adds a memory of kettle corn that instantly conjures a summertime carnival. The caramel is not a sickly, saccharine one! This is far from scented candle territory and is very similar to caramel made from scratch on the stove. For a split second, I whiffed the dreaded dill pickle note some other have mentioned. Luckily it disappeared as fast as it came. But I see you stealth pickle! A little gourmand, a little edgy, I am supremely digging this almost skin-scent that feels very natural and soft. Instead of a night-vibe, I am getting more "lazy Sunday morning" (MMM's fragrance, which is more laundry based). To compare, ELDO's Fin Du Monde is spicier and harsher. The carrot seed, cumin, and pepper penetrate the buttery gunpowder, where this one languishes in creamy sweetness. I wonder how they will do layered? Ultimately, what tipped me over the edge into purchasing this was another reviewer's mention of one of my all-time favorite perfumes: Mariella Burani's Mariella Burani. I totally get what they are alluding to when they say there is a similarity, but it is hard to articulate what exactly that is (it is probably the tonka, rosewood, amber, vanilla, sandalwood, benzoin, and unlisted powder notes that are combining to create such witchery). I disagree, however, that: 1. You can find MB: MB for $20 on the internet (you can't) 2. MB is a caramel scent (it's not) 3. Amour Nocturne isn't intriguing (it is) This is truly a unique and lovely fragrance that I am glad is not discontinued. It is a perfect daily driver and special occasion perfume all wrapped into one. I love it.

For a gourmand lover like me, a caramel note is a good sight at first, but it can become cloying quite fast. However, here it stands together with a milky feel(I don't really enjoy the smell of hot milk and here I felt only a glimpse of it, fortunately) and a slightly powdery combination of orchid and vanilla - or maybe it's the orchid itself, I'm not sure. This combination is an unusual opening for sure. It gives a feel of a thin-textured cloud with the just right amount of sweetness and powderiness. The allmighty gunpowder note arrives a bit later. Now, I have no clue what gunpowder smells like, but the note I get is metallic and dry with a somewhat smoky quality. The interchange between pastry-like opening and the ground metal is unlike anything I've smelled in my life and I like it very much. The drydown is rather familiar as it adds a slightly synthetic cedar note which overwhelms the rest, but, honestly, I do not care about the drydown when the earlier phases are this special. The longevity of Amour Nocturne is very solid on my skin, with a nice projecting wave to follow it. This is a definition of a unisex scent, either gender can wear this one with equal success. I see this mostly as a midseason scent, but it can be worn whenever, with adjusted application. The scent itself is more linear than complex, but it cannot be put into any of those two categories. The one thing I'll never learn to like about this scent is the different-than-usual L'Artisan bottle, but I guess that's just me, and is more because I love the iconic look of a standard bottle than because this one isn't nice. Also, it's quite expensive, both compared to other L'Artisans and generally speaking. However, this is a magnificent scent in my book, a very unusual gourmand, and certainly the best of this Explosions d'Emotions collection. 9/10

Amour Nocturne would be on the shelf of my top 5 all time favorites if I could bring myself to demote any of the beauties already there. And since my stupid-large collection now exceeds, ahem... 700 bottles, I'd say position #6 represents a pretty darn good recommendation. No question about it, it's gunpowder that makes Amour Nocturne so special, so unique. Without it AN would still be a delicious, milky caramel gourmand treat and a MUST HAVE for every gourmand lover. But the addition of gunpowder to the "recipe" moves AN out of the kitchen/sweetshop and into a delightful nighttime summer vacation experience of enjoying a big bag of caramel corn while watching a brilliant fireworks display. Delicious, gooey caramel with a surprising pop & bang of tangy smoke. Pure pleasure! Every time I spray it on my eyes close with happiness and I'm not only sniffing my wrists, I'm tempted to lick them. I vaguely, but only vaguely sense a bit of cedar that seems to serve as a solid foundation for all the sweet & tangy bits but orchid is too elusive for this nose to parse out. No way would I have guessed orchid was in the mix if I hadn't seen it in the notes pyramid. There are still many of the discontinued 4.2oz bottles available on line. I've got my back-ups already so all the rest are there waiting for you! Don't miss the chance to have this marvelous summer evening in a bottle for your very own. Edit: In warm weather I couldn't parse out the cedar but on cold, winter chilled skin the cedar note jumps right to the forefront with the caramel and gun powder. And I mean it really, really JUMPS out. No matter how much you might love caramel if you cannot abide cedar then AN will simply not work for you.

Okay, how to put this together. To me, this perfume is so poetic, I cannot even describe it. In Sicily, there are these tiny streets, full of people, screaming and dirt. You can feel a bit lost or even threatened there, something so lively is in the air. And at one point you come to the spot where you have funeral service on one side and baby equipment shop on the other side of this tiny street, opposite one another. It is bizarre, yet so poetic. This perfume reminds me of this. Especially at the start, the gunpowder and smokiness dominate, which smell very churchy and cemetery to me, a bit edgy also. And then the sweet milk comes in, creating something so safe, so innocent, a bit nostalgic and mostly, beautiful. Everything, death and birth blends together and stays blended till the end. I love every single note in this one, like someone would create a scent only for me and I can smell every single note listed. Wow. Like the first reviewer said, the notes here feel as if they weren't smells, but thoughts or feelings. This is true. To me, this perfume is so alive, so inspirational, so poetic. I am an actress and I work in theatre. I often find fragrance for each character and I was thinking which one this could be. But then I figured out that this is not a character fragrance, this is a theatre itself fragrance. This is how theatre smells, how it feels. An old theatre, full of memories, full of inspiration, poetry, life, death, boundaries, hard work, laughter, hedonism, stories, tears, full of everything. Like I've said, I cannot describe it. This is not a perfume, it is an artist.