Private Collection L'Oiseau de Nuit

I could smell my arm all day wearing this. I’m not sure exactly how to describe this, it doesn’t have huge projection, it has something about it that makes me think of dark greenery, but it doesn’t smell like a forest, it has the depth of smell that a rich aged fruitcake has without smelling like a cake. The Peacocks by William Degueve captures pretty much the mental image it gives me. I did write a much better review but thanks to the page reloading after searching for the correct painting- I lost it. So that’s it, it’s a painting of white peacocks in the dark with a fruitcake made of the essence of a forest. Also I wanted to add that when I smelled this, it was the dregs of a sample someone had sent to me that had been stupidly just put in a drawer and it had leaked to almost nothing. I couldn’t stop sniffing the last syrupy tiny drop it contained and that was it, I had to have it. I had zero idea it was sold as being a ‘modern leather’. I don’t really like leather and the majority of scents containing anything purporting to be leather like or a leather accord make me headachy and nauseated. This isn’t leather that I have been shown in the past. To me it isn’t leather at all. I’m very glad to have smelled it knowing nothing at all about it as I probably wouldn’t have even sampled it.

Oh, I kept wondering why this scent reminds me so of goat leather - it has that special quality that keeps me coming back to sniff and assess 'do I like this OR is it awful' Until I read it is supposed to contain actual leather - AHA. I feel that it's too assertive for me to wear. It can surely be worn by a woman but she needs to be assertive and, ehr, metro. The picture I keep having smelling Oiseau the Nuit is that of stylish gangster movies. The perfume goes more and more soft and sweet over a course of hours and I like that a lot, but by the time its lovely heart has been reached, not much of it is left to enjoy. A far neighbour of Oiseau de nuit is Dawn Spencer Hurlitz's Blond Suede. But Blond Suede is a lot more masculine and woody. A warmer, more oriental and definitely more feminine neighbour to Oiseau de Nuit is Memo's Manoa.

Probably my favorite opening of any perfume I've tried. It smells like a glowing bush of perfectly round berries being fed on by shimmering starlings in the moonlight. They tilt their heads and sharp beaks curiously, and then fly away with a branch of the magical black fruits. Very nocturnal, deep, shining, smouldering, black, juicy, and mysterious. It's what I imagine deadly nightshade would smell like, only if it was edible. After an hour something herbal, screechy, and flat becomes the most dominant note. Not happy with this transformation. Goes from signature scent material to sharp and unfriendly artemesia mixed with boozy-sticky davana. This is one I will have to keep trying before I can decide if I want a bottle or not.

This is one of my favorite perfumes--- orange blossom, labdnanum,davana, benzoin. I wouldn't even put this in a leather category, nor does M. Guillaume. Its a well constructed fruity floral. not a gourmand in the true senseof a PG gourmand. I recommend the new Praline et Santal.THAT is a gourmand as is aomassi

It starts out very fruity and resinous, borderline boozy and balsamic, and is immediately in league with the amber legends. I think most of the discomfort with this scent comes from the misunderstanding that this is supposed to be a dry amber (leather + "artemisia"), but turns out to be the opposite—syrupy & medicinal—and we have DAVANA (Artemisia pallens), NOT wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), to thank; in fact, davana plays such an important role in this fragrance that it should've been up-voted to the level of labdanum! I have 3 problems with L'Oiseau de Nuit though: 1. The fruity note is somewhat generic; I assume popular aroma chemicals helped with that. 2. As it dries down, it becomes more of a conventional amber and loses distinctiveness. 3. Might be unfair to say, but it's somewhat overshadowed by #25 Indochine.