Mon Numero 7

This opens with a hefty dose of spiced mandarin, rich with cinnamon and what smells to me of clove. I get a distinct impression of hot cross bun (sorry America if you don't have this cultural food phenomena at Easter - its sweet bread with spices, candied peel and dried fruit) which is rather pleasant actually. After a few mins the incense and tea bring a smoky but not quite bitter note to hover under the spices. The dry down is slightly woody, but still spice lead which I love, the mandarin hung around for a good while too, which was unexpected. My skin seems to amplify these spiced and woody notes in perfume so this worked especially well for me. What I didn't get at all anywhere in here was anything floral, not the vaguest hint, which for me is brilliant. Undoubtedly unisex, this is rich and warm rather than sweet and totally different to anything I've come upon in department stores. After 6 hours on a couple of spritz (spritzes? spritzi??, what is the plural of spritz anyway???), I can still catch the occasional hint of the base woods, so no longevity issues for me. I do tend to apply sparingly though and prefer to re apply at the 4 hour mark. The silage won't overpower anyone in close proximity, and I have successfully worn this to work even in hot weather, though this tends to be on management rather than clinical days as patients + strong scent = poor form.

UPDATE 8 Aug 2026: I've had this perfume for 12 years now - unbelievable X) My nose has since developed quite a lot, I believe. This is still mainly spicy, but with an earthy undertone. Very little flowers in here. It's still a spice market. It's a very natural smell, if you like that. Alluring in a way a red desert is, where you see a woman with everything covered up but her eyes, which are lined in kohl. She's supposedly wearing no perfume, but smells like this naturally, due to the spices in the food she eats. You probably get the idea. Still too foreign to me though, so my opinion hasn't really changed on this one :) ORIGINAL REVIEW 26 Sep 2014: At first sniff, this is SPICY! The first second I could smell some cinnamon, but 3 seconds later, this was a nuclear bomb! It does indeed then smell like a spice marked... like you have dove into the spice bags, especially the clove one. It's also very dry. It stays very sharp and chilli-like for the next 10 minutes. In that time, the insence begins to apper too, which also is very dry. To be honest, I think that these two notes are SO strong that I would not recommend this to people that are not used to strong spices, or for wearing this around people that are not used to strong spices - the smell was so strong that I got a little dizzy. Then something slightly soapy appears, still with strong insence. I think this is the tea note: BLACK tea, not the fresh green leaf. Why soapy? Probably because of the tannins (you can look up the smell, it can also smell a little leathery and woody). This too is dry...! In the periphery I begin to smell jasmine + gardenia, plus bitter tuberose. I can't say I smell the rose in this at any point. The final dry-down is an insence and black tea with flowers. If you are wearing this in humid environments, you will easier smell the Gardenia, jasmine, tuberose and cinnamon. I really recommend wearing this in humid environments. You can also put some water over where you sprayed the perfume and test the smell out in that way. Do I like the smell? No. To me it's both not very pleasant and also not espesially interesting either. I don't have any memories connected to this type og smell, so it feels too foreign... in a bad way. This perfume is way too exotic for me (European). I would really like to hear an Indian's opinion on this perfume though - maybe it's not as foreign to them? I also don't like the bitter tuberose, and that it takes a god half hour for it to dry down to a tolerable ( for me) smell. The whole composition is quite flat - there really isn't much development at all. The whole thing lasted for only ca 4 hours on my skin - that is crazy for such an expensive perfume!

I was given a sample of this fragrance and I never would have guessed it contained Jasmine and Gardenia. On me it smells dark woody and very animalic. The incense and spices give an immediate hit but I also found it reminiscent of Moroccan leather or fur from Afghanistan - instant transportation to the hippy era of the Sixties, I was surprised to find it does not contain Patchouli. If only it were not so fleeting a fragrance on my skin I would buy it, but I put that down to my skin being very dry - it's probably great on olive skins, or as some would say, a fragrance for brunettes as opposed to blondes.

I have a chance to briefy smell this one and on first impression it has Nuit de Tubereuse's DNA writen all over it (also by L'artisan and Bertrand Duchaufour). This one smells a little softer, smoother while Nuit de Tubereuse is more spiky and edgy.