Nuit de Cellophane (2009)
by Serge Lutens Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido

A most Beautiful sweet white floral scent; perfect for a hot summer evening when you feel like walking outdoors or sip white tea and eat dark chocolate.

Am discovering how incredible the SLutens line is ...

Big thumbs up...!!!

1st September, 2011.

Nuit de Cellophane smells rather nice - fruity, tea-like osmanthus, done a little more softly and transparently than most osmanthus soliflores I've smelled. Not groundbreaking, but I can see spritzing this on in the heat and enjoying it. I'd give it a neutral rating, all in all, if it weren't for the very disappointing longevity and sillage after the first hour or so.

I'd recommend anyone who likes this style of fragrance but wants something a little more sophisticated to check out Nicolai's Odalique ( ideally vintage, but even the modern stuff is superior to this ). If you want a nicer osmanthus in a related vein, I recommend Parfum d'Empire's Osmanthus Interdite or Ormonde Jayne's Osmanthus, both sunny, fruity fragrances a lot like this but with superior longevity and sillage.

28th May, 2010.

Nuit de Cellophane opens with the smell of the Serge Lutens doing designer. This reminds me of a more subtle, slightly less synthetic version of some of the better, respected ‘90s designer fragrances for women. This is a textured fruity / white floral that is so toned down that it doesn’t seem to be a Serge lutens offering. It’s a pleasant scent – not very original or exciting. I find it performs pretty much as a skin scent except that it doesn’t seem to have the longevity of a typical skin scent. The soft white floral is more of a texture than an accord… it’s nice but it is too unexciting to be offered in such a linear presentation. I get just an echo of a drydown that is sweet and musky and fruity with a bit of wood supporting it. I certainly don’t get much out of Nuit de Cellophane: I can appreciate an attempt to make a sheer, translucent fragrance, but this one is more “thin” than “sheer”… more “spiritless” than “gentle.”

10th May, 2010.

I’m beginning to wonder if Lutens and Sheldrake are running out of ideas. Their last few releases strike me as retreads of territory that they’ve long since explored: Sarrasins a subdued re-working of Tubéreuse Criminelle’s shocking camphor and white flower accord, this time done with jasmine rather than tuberose; Louve another Rahät Loukoum with the volume dialed down by a half; and El Attarine a more demure Arabie with a rose bow on top. Now comes Nuit de Cellophane, which is a fruity floral. And how original is that?

If the piercingly sweet, chemical fruit note that opens Nuit de Cellophane is meant to be novel or arresting, it’s an hilarious miscalculation, since every vulgar, juvenile fruity floral scent since roughly 1990 has opened with the same thoroughly nasty flourish. I suppose ironic humor has as much a place in the art of perfumery as in any other, but Nuit de Cellophane is a one-liner that goes nowhere special after its pratfall entrance. The remainder of its act is an apricot syrup and polite white flower accord that fades into a bland, powdery-sweet woody oriental drydown. As Lutens fragrances go this one is not all that potent, and I can’t even detect it on my skin two hours after a moderate application. Why, I wonder, did they bother?

13rd December, 2009.

Put simply, NUIT DE CELLOPHANE is a bunch of white flowers in decay. Distinctively indolic but not in the same class as Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle's Une Fleur de Cassie. Yes, it does brighten up, turning a little soapish later on but the overall character is still disappointingly bland especially for a Lutens. Only a hardcore fan would find it worthwhile buying a full bottle - to complete a collection.

5th December, 2009.

I bought this bottle today.
I've been looking for a decent fragrance that smells Osmanthus (which I can smell straight from my garden but can never get enough of its goddess sweetness) and Nuit de Cellophane is what I want. It smells exactly what I get from the tiny blossom blooming in March.
At first I only had a tiny dap on my wrist and it smelled so lovely and light, and I thought "This is gonna be my very 1st summer Serge Lutens fragrance" (so far I've owned Douce Amere, Daim Blond, A la Nuit, Fleurs de Citronners and none of these I feel ok to pull off a summer day), so I immediately purchased a bottle.
I got home and take a proper spritz and it turned out not "light" at all (since I thought it must have lotus in it), still sweet and lovely, but absolutely not light. Yes it's a little soapy, like floral-fruity soapy, not clean soapy.
But what disappoints me is that it lasts, like, an hour on me. I totally can not suspect any trace of it on my skin after an hour, which is not equal to the price I payed for.

6th October, 2009.