L'Oiseau de Nuit is supposed to be a leather scent, but I don't smell leather. What I do smell is a complicated, warm and sweet, almost gourmand, oriental.
Different notes, dark and light, swirl up from my skin. Sometimes sugary, sometimes herbal, sometimes smoky and woody, OdN keeps me coming back to my wrist to smell more. The resin labdanum is honeyed wood and earth. The davana is a peach syrup floral note. Benzoin, another resin, smells like sweet vanilla.
When I first put OdN on, I thought I smelled cotton candy and beer nuts. In my mind I was back at the old fair grounds, where I've gone every October for around 30 years to the Markham Fair. The fall, for me, is that fair with it's smells of burning leaves and sawdust mixed with the sweeter smells of the foodstands. I'll go again this year, and of course there will be a midway, the rides lighting up the sky like the electric plumage of giant night birds.
House: Parfumerie Generale
Nose: Pierre Guillaume
Notes: cistus labdanum, liqueur of davana, benzoin, leather
Photo: DOS82
