Midnight Flower
Neil Morris Fragrances (2007)

Fly not yet, 'tis just the hour
When pleasure like the midnight flower
That scorns the eye of vulgar light
Begins to bloom for sons of night
And maids who love the moon

This opens with a mix of strong aldehydes & orange peel, swiftly followed by indolic jasmine. The notes list mentions "melati blossom", which apparently means the unopened buds of jasmine sambac in Javanese, so that explains what I'm smelling here. The fragrance develops into a thick, sweet tropical floral underpinned with patchouli & an animalic note, & slowly smooths out into a more milky, lactonic floral. Four hours in it's settled very close to the skin, there's a faint sandalwood in the base, & after eight hours it's almost faded out.

I enjoyed the drydown of this one, but that first hour was rather suffocatingly dense on a warm day. I might prefer it in cooler weather...

The opening strikes with a clean, refreshing citrus / floral that is very much fortified by aldehydes – for a Neil Morris fragrance it is quite dramatic, thanks to the aldehydes. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think I get wisps of indole in the first few minutes after spraying: could be from the gardenia. It's a beautiful opening… refined, delicate, feminine…and it even hints at a fetching modernized classicism. The middle is a soft green tea / floral accord that continues the personality already established. I must say that the use of florals in Midnight Flower is ingenious: They come across in bouquet form yet are natural, sensitive… organic. As usual I get more amber than musk in the base but I do sense a bit of the earthiness of the patchouli that nicely grounds the entire pyramid. As usual with the Neil Morris fragrances I've tried, the delicacy belies the fragrance's better than adequate longevity. Its performance on the skin is nothing less than excellent.