Tendre est la Nuit Obscur (2013)
by Majda Bekkali

BLUF: Resinous, slightly sweet, oriental-inspired fragrance that I’m surprised is marketed as feminine. Pleasant enough but calms to a skin scent fairly quickly. Classic niche: nice but doesn’t warrant its retail price IMO.

Opens with a warm oriental blend of peppery spices, resins, smoky incense, and also a bit of funk, which I’m guessing is coming from castoreum and immortelle? Sometimes the resins smell piney and sometimes not. When it does, it sort of comes across as a rounder and less-lively cousin of Jubilation XXV, but that phase lasts only minutes. Dries down to reveal benzoin, leather, amber, and soft florals. That sounds like a fairly common accord, but if I had to pick one word to describe it, the word “weird” comes to mind. It’s a sexy weird though and think it would be appreciated by both men & women on the opposite sex…if they can smell it before it’s gone.

Folks elsewhere seem to smell a patchouli-dominated fragrance, but I don’t at all. I’m not anosmic to patchouli (as far as I know) but I can’t help but think maybe some of that is just parroting. I’ve heard that immortelle can have a patchouli-like note, so perhaps a bit of that as well. I’m not all that familiar with imortelle to be honest.

It was a blind buy for my girlfriend because she thought the bottle was cool (no harm in that) but I end up wearing it more than her. There are so many masculine fragrances I’ve tried that are far more feminine smelling than this, but I think it would work equally well on either sex.

Overall, it’s nice but like so many niche fragrances, way overpriced based on how fleeting of a scent it is. Of course, value is in the eye of the beholder…or credit card holder. The bottle is really cool though.