Mont de Narcisse

my long searched for white whale. i had heard about its mystic allure for so long. This perfume had been on my list for YEARS. I happened to be in paris in 2022 just after it had been discontinued, and managed to get the last bottle on the shelf at printemps !!! i bought it without even a test and it was well worth it. It is a very unique scent— to me it smells like rotting meat and recycled aluminum cans, with dashes of formaldehyde and sickening sweetness of the white flower. it’s so indescribable and obscure but also completely on the nose. It is definitely a nighttime scent, to be paired with lots of hairspray, heavy eyeliner, and sips of absinthe. Wearing it makes me feel like frankensteins bride wearing electric green silk charmeuse slip and rolls of acid bathed lace. it is powerful and polarizing but definitely a hill i will die on.

Does it smell like narcissus? Well, no, not particularly, which perhaps means they didn't choose the best name. But! I love this fragrance anyway. For me, it does what L'Artisan does best: conjures a whole charismatic setting, a mini travel experience, rather than just something that smells nice. The setting (in my imagination anyway) is a French countryside in the summer, golden light and sunny hay meadows and a hill with a rustic but tasteful old stone house on top of it, with comfortable leather furniture and a cottage garden. The smooth leather is probably the main note, and does remind me of Cuir d'Ange, as others have said. But Mont de Narcisse is more open-air: Cuir d'Ange taken outside into the sun and hay. It feels more natural, and I love it. Putting it on my list of scents to get more of.

Smells like the Kyiv metro, like Zhytomyrska station on my skin, when it opens up slightly, mysterious, making me press my nose close to my wrist to feel the skin. Someone wrote that this is how Nosferatu would smell - and I think I agree with that. Yesterday I realized that this perfume actually smells more like prunes. Home-smoked, over firewood, sealed somewhere in a bag, which you then open, and it hits your nose with this preserved impression of an orchard... Narcissus isn't the main note here at all, but it's so beautiful together, so delicate, that now I want a full bottle, even though I already have too many perfumes. But I'm still thinking about whether I'll buy it.

As you can tell by my username.. I adore this scent. It was the first perfume that got me into scents. I saw it on tiktok in a video prompted "Want to smell like Nosferatu?" and I've been obsessed ever since. This smell makes me feel like I'm in an old church.. Or my grandfathers shed, smelling of smoke, leather, dampness.. It works really well on my skin and is sexy, comforting, mysterious. I can't get enough. Because I'm not familiar with narcissus, I can't really speak on whether or not the name is false advertising. Regardless, this scent can do no wrong in my eyes and makes me feel like an alluring old vampire 💋

This just goes to show you have to make your own opinions and judgements on fragrance. I see so far on Fragrantica this scent has not received much love, but when I was in New York this past weekend and went to the new Saks Fifth Avenue 2nd floor Cosmetic Department, this was one of 2 or 3 fragrances that really stood out to me as unique and different from others. And it is MY type of fragrance: peppery-woody-green-leather. I really LOVE it! The other new one that I liked there was La Commedia by Salvatore Ferragamo.