This is one of my special bedtime treats! One spray is enough, otherwise it can get overwhelming. Pepper, spices, tuberose --rather green, orange blossom, rose and benzoin are the main notes I smell in this beauty. It stays sharp for a long time, and the drydown appears very slowly but then, ah! How soft, how creamy, velvety, and smooth! Yet still with a tinge of the potent tuberose, who is here like a headstrong girl relentlessly and powerfully wanting to noticed and taken care of --but the girl caresses and speaks softly to lure you. It is a very special fragrance to me, like the child in me wanting attention insistently. It is close to my heart, and as I write these words, I begin to understand why.
I remember reading a story about two perfume lovers. They took a vial of Iris Silver Mist and added some peach. Drop by drop went the C14, and nothing happened, until -another drop- and suddenly, like a ghost, before their noses was Iris Gris, that legendary lost fragrance by Fath.
This feels like the same thing has been tried with tuberose and orange blossom, but the tipping point was never found and the result is a bit out of focus.
As a sucker for tuberose, I added Nuit de Tubereuse to my wish list and waited patiently for a bottle to show up on these lands, for L'Artisan Parfumeur doesn't sell in local shops where I live and buying online would mean paying four times the retail price due to taxes and currency exchange rates. So I couldn't be more thrilled when I found a 30 ml for sale online from a fellow traveler for a very reasonable price. Having read many reviews about NdT, I thought its peppery aspect could be challenging, but believed I could get past the initial blast and enjoy the rest of the composition. Silly me. The harsh peppery opening accompanied the fragrance from top to bottom and although it lost some of its potency within the passing of time, it was still a shy tuberose lying in a pool of pepper. I tried NdT both in colder and warmer weather, but my efforts were useless. The heat would give the tuberose some room to develop, but still it wasn't enough to make me like the entire composition, which felt watery, spicy and much more masculine than feminine. So I bid NdT adieu and the bottle went straight to my son's closet. And believe me: NdT smells divine on him! I'm rating it neutral because although it didn't suit me, I can't deny that it's a nice composition.
Great longevity on this one. It's rich and full of tuberose and cardamom. It is orangey and woody. The cloves aren't overbearing. I can smell ylang ylang and angelica in the background. The resins add something to it to make it seem crunchy, for lack of a better word. I can take or leave tuberose perfumes. This one though, keeps me intrigued, smelling my skin frequently. It's a whiff of cookies baking, or maybe biscotti.
Not bad--I used my sample and largely enjoyed it. Definitely do not need to go out and buy this though. It is, of course, very floral, and can get a bit overwhelming when applied generously. But on my skin there is nothing that really differentiates it from a whole host of other Big White Floral nice-for-summer-can-get-a-bit-too-much scents.