Harmatan Noir 11
by Parfumerie Generale

Jasmine, cedar, mint tea, salt, patchouli
Interesting assortment of notes. Minty, florals are not too sweet, smokey and silvery incense, a bit of spice. This is a cool, dry scent and so far I like it. It gets more floral and spicier, bigger and smokier. I have a marvelous image – old stones anointed by incense and prayers. Interesting! It hovers at the edge of sweetness but does not go over the line. The tangy notes of salty patchouli get bigger. Yet it remains cool, translucent (not dense), mysterious and intriguing. Slightly metallic in an interesting way, quirky, elusive, intriguing. Obviously I need to think about this and try it again…

30th December, 2010.

Yet another great fragrance from Parfumerie Generale. Very modern and "trendy". Casual, but also great for a night at the town. Girls will love this one on a man! This aromatic, fresh, herbal spicy fragrance is great for spring and summer, and will fit any age and occasions. The longevity is very good on my skin, and the sillage is ok. One of the most modern and trendy fragrances in my collection. Highly recommended!

18th December, 2010.

Harmatan Noir begins as a rich, very smoky tea scent, heavily spiced, and sweetened by berries and perhaps cassis. The smoky fruit and tea accord rests on a foundation of powdery cedar whose dry aspect offsets the sweet berries nicely. Like Olivia Giacobetti’s otherwise much different Idole de Lubin, Harmatan Noir manages to be at once mysteriously dark and transparent. If forced to guess, I’d attribute this effect in Harmatan Noir to a tart lemon note and a very carefully integrated dab of mint.

The spiced fruit outlasts the tea, which is unfortunate, since the fruity accord is more pedestrian than the fabulous sweet smoke of the first half hour. Harmatan Noir continues for another hour or two as a spicy, jammy fruit composition over a woody base, before trailing off into a woody-musky drydown. While it’s an attractive and distinctive scent, especially toward the start, the longevity is very, very disappointing. I’d like it much better if its opening accords persisted for another hour before the more conventional fruit pie phase set in, but as it is I find the olfactory experience a letdown.

16th December, 2009.

For a scent named after a dusty Saharan wind, Harmatan Noir's opening is more than a little surprising: a mint so sweet, you could mistake it for a cordial desperate to be diluted in ice cold water. The effect is bracing, but also more than a little crude. Thankfully, things soon begin to settle - a hint of clove tones down the mint overload - but the journey to the drydown rapidly becomes predictable and dull. You've smelt it all before: smoky woods of a sort you can find in dozens of masculines in every high street perfume counter. I think I can detect wisps of what Harmatan's initial ambition may have been - there are fleeting moments when it aspires to the headiness of mint-flavoured sheesha tobacco - but it hasn't got the guts to live up to its evocative name.

3rd December, 2009.

I tried Harmatan Noir years ago and didn't care for it, then I thought I'd try it again after my recent infatuation with salty scents. It definitely has a pleasantly salty aspect, but other than that I'm afraid it's rather faint and vague and generically "fresh". Luckily not sharply ozonic or aquatic, but still too synthetic for my taste. I guess I was right to dismiss it as uninteresting before, though the salt note I can now pick out makes me keep the sample for further consideration this time.

30th November, 2009.

Very boring.

Great story behind it and nice list of notes, but the scent is just big, massive piece of boredom. Its like a grey cloud over some depsessing industrial city full of tired, pale suicidal people.

Smell of nothingness.

19th November, 2008.