First impression after about an hour of wear (will edit in the future):
I bought mine on Amazon from "Hammad's Bargains" for a mere $25.
I was pleased to see the bottle was weighty and solid (even the cap) and the new packaging was good as well. The packaging of the past dozen or so new bottles I've bought or tried at this price point ($30 or less) was minimal and flimsy. Probably because quite a few of them were Testers.
And of course in the case of the vintage bottles I've picked up 2nd-hand off eBay there was no packaging, just bubble wrap and the like. So it's nice to see Armaf puts a proper effort into its presentation of Tres Nuit.
A new bottle of this could actually make a good gift for the right person: one would assume it cost $50-$100 in a store.
Btw, the bottle is indeed blue, but it's such a dark blue that it looks black unless there's a strong light on it or better yet shining through it.
The back of the bottle says "fragrance made in France" in small print (along with the manufacturing date: 2017 for mine). The leather casing has more writing on the bottom which proclaims it's an EDT. The box it came in says it's 80% alcohol which I assume means 20% perfume oils.
The initial impression is the projection is decent-to-good but it's too early to be sure or comment on the longevity. I've noticed some scents don't last too long on my middle-aged skin, which is noticeably drier than it was in my youth. I discovered that some of my frags which I had thought had weak longevity (like my Varvatos Vintage) actually last a long time on my clothes (overnight or longer).
So the next time you think a scent is under-performing, you might want to try spraying it on your shirt and see if you can still smell it there in the morning. If you can, then its longevity is obviously fine, and you might want to try applying a moisturizer before spraying on your favorite frag.
As far as the smell: it's quite nice: I like it but can't say I love it.
Initial impression is it's scent is a 3/5 for me. Not because of the quality, which seems good and a 3.5 or even a 4/5 but because of my personal taste. I'll have to spend some time with it to see if it grows on me or not.
I got it because I thought it might make a good Springtime scent, and I've heard it's a very good GIT clone, so I was curious to see if it's good enough to wear instead of spending $200 or whatever on GIT. I figure I'll get a sample of GIT at some point and see if it's worth upgrading or not.
Tres Nuit actually smells vaguely familiar, which makes me wonder if I've smelled GIT before without knowing that's what I was smelling, or if it's some other ingredient that's tickling my memory.
It's a little more floral than I ideally prefer (I think I smell geranium, which isn't my favorite fragrance to wear or even smell although I do have one on the porch which is nice to look at when it blooms in the spring).
Some people are mentioning lemon, but I'm definitely not getting the impression of a lemony opening like my bottle of vintage 4711 gives me, nor am I getting anything like the big neroli opening my sample of Terre d'Hermes Fraiche gave me. (I loved the opening of TDH Fraiche, the dry down not so much). According to the ingredients on the box, there's citral, citronellol, and limonene in it, so I assume I should be smelling more citrus scent than I am, but maybe it's there in the dry down.
As far as Tres Nuit's comparison to Cool Water, I really don't get it.
I actually have a little bottle of vintage Cool Water which I enjoy using several days a week, and in fact I like it so much I'm planning to purchase a bottle of vintage Cool Water cologne at some point.
I could never confuse the two fragrances. In fact if I hadn't read about the similarities I never would have noticed any difference between the two. Maybe it's there in the dry down but right now I'm not picking up on it.
EDIT: After 6 weeks of wearing Tres Nuit and learning to enjoy its very prominent violet note, I've begun picking up on the violet note in Cool Water and now I smell it every time I wear it. Now I don't know how I missed it before, but I guess I my nose didn't know what to look for!
Point is there is indeed a similarity between the two fragrances.
I will say that Cool Water smells like more of a fougere-style scent and a lot more "me" and "masculine" than Tres Nuit does upon a first wear.
But then I'm in my late 40s and a bit of an "Old School" man.
Blind buys are always a bit of a crapshoot, and if you can try before you buy then that's obviously the smarter choice. But if you can't find any to try, and can pick this up for just $25-$35 you can't go far wrong.