Nuit de Tubéreuse
L'Artisan Parfumeur (2010)

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.

Ah, Monsieur Bertrand
You think that you can distract
Madame Tuberose

From her great mission
Of refeminization
With your silly tricks

Your fruits, your flowers
Your spices and your resins
But trust me, Bertrand

You cannot succeed!
Estrogen's floral trumpet
Cannot be silenced

By this orchestra
Of diffuseful idiots
No matter the tune.

Enjoyable, yes
As she stole the whole show from
Their useless antics

You had my dear wife
Mistaking her for a fruit
And the scent for men

We both know better
And though I keep my bottle
Know that you have failed!

Your delightful tune
This tubéreuserous ruse
Olfactive nonsense

Is simply no match
For my dear lady's 19
Spare X chromosomes.

Au revoir, Bertrand
This floral struggle session
Shall not be our last!

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.

This is one I would never have considered in the past. It's very peppery on opening and has a fruity tang that's usually a no-no for me. But, maybe it's the time of day, I'm trying this mid afternoon, and I'm loving it today! It's much spicier than I thought and not too 'sultry tropical'. Actually I think this is only the second or third time I've ever sprayed this -- it was part of a set of four or five travel sized vials I got a couple of years ago from the Artisan website. I think I sometimes get a sort of fatty rancid butter hint from heavier perfumes on initial spray and this definitely had that on last spraying (maybe I imagine it and it's time of day dependent - evening scents in the evening, morning scents in the morning...). It mixes up the floral and the spicy very nicely. I'm even imagining something sweet and sharp like ginger - probably the pepper and cardamom. Anyway it works beautifully today