La Nuit (1985)
by Paco Rabanne

La Nuit is truly first rate, and I am staggered as to why this was discontinued. I find Paco Rabanne's current offerings 'unremarkable' at best, but this juice is wonderful, and smells of quality, if in a very monied '80s way. It is generally categorised as a leather, but on me it is more of a syrupy, sumptuous chypre, with the honeyed woods and oakmoss especially prominent. It's certainly forthright, and could be unisex to my mind, and is an audacious, Dynasty-era reworking of something far more stately and classic. It's a fabulous, glamorous scent with tremendous staying power and evolution.

I LUV dark and dirty scents and was thrilled when a kind BNer sent me a sample of this highly touted (and DISCONTINUED???!) frag. My - um - mature skin and bod get right to the heart of matters pretty quick and the rich, body heat of this complex beauty appear in minutes on me. The leather is ambery and hints of tobacco, the roses are dark and heavy laden in a dimly lit bedroom smelling of S-E-X....

Sigh.

La Nuit smells like an aging street walker's, cracked, old leather jacket that's been softened up with a stick of butter. Redolent of cheap make-up, wear this one and pretend you have some fascinating [i]john[/i] stories to tell.
The amber-butter note comes from a slug of aldehydes, no doubt.

If you like Bal a Versailles you'll like La Nuit. They have a lot in common in the beginning and in the middle. La Nuit is definitely a leather scent, but it's not as hardcore as, say, Montale's Cuir d'Arabie, which has become my reference leather. The leather comes early in the drydown and this is when it reminds me most of Bal a Versailles. That stage lasts for a while, but then something strange happens. With La Nuit, it's all about the drydown. That's where the scent's real personality emerges and sets it apart from everything else. It seems to develop into something from another era. It starts to smell more animalic and "vintage" in a way that's hard to put your finger on. Perfumes of today smell nothing like this in the drydown. At this point on, it is nothing like Bal a Versailles, but is it's own undefinable thing. In my opinion, it's not quite as raw, "filthy" or "vulgar" as some reviewers have described (I wish it was), but it's definitely provoking and sensual.

Yup. definetely filthy. I was about 14 when this came out. My mother had gotten a tiny card vial as a sample and left it aside, uninterested. I sniffed it once, blushed up over my ears and slunk away, as if I had been caught reading a dirty book. Oh my virgin senses. Careful where you wear it.

OK, I bought this basically only for the reason that Luca Turin said so delicious things about it in his blog, which is sadly now closed.
As you may know, his thoughts were like "this is probably the most animalic parfum ever made..." and "there is something so wrong with this frag that it`s truly amazing" etc.

Got to have it, indeed.

So, I sprayed it on my hand, and guess what happend??
Exactly: I was disapointed again, like I have been before with these high expectations. (especially with Dzing!)
I thought "what is this..?" "This, the most animalic scent..?" "This, something so wrong..?"
To me only wrongness seemed to be that it smelled like some usual, even cheap women`s perfume. Flowery, feminine, not that complex at all. I wanted to cry - this had to be my holy grail of getting dirty, getting really weird. I wanted to shock some people with some style wearing this, not with this plain women`s cocktail.


Then I fell asleep. (Zzzzz...2hours)

I woke up from my nap, and I have hardly dried my tears of disapointment, as I smell my upper palm...
What happens??
I start to grin, I start to roll my eyes and mumble to myself..."Mmmm...so this is what the man was talking about...So it`s all about the drydown, all about letting it develope and heat up on the skin...WOW!!"

But hey, leather??!! Are you serious??? What kind of leder hosen have you`ve been smelling then???

Nichts leather for me, but...how shall I put it...lovely crotch???