SOTD: Serge Lutens Serge Noire

I continue to be surprised at how much I love this one. When I first sprayed it on my arm, long ago at Barney's (visualize nostalgic Mists of Time... OK, it was just last year or so) I thought that it was somewhere between unimpressive and unpleasant.

I had something much sweeter and more inviting (Chergui?) on the other arm, so when we rushed away (Barney's usually needs to fit in after a show and before dinner) I was happily sniffing that, and occasionally checking in to see what the deal was with that weird, sour stuff on the Serge Noire arm.

Then the weird, sour stuff started to develop, and became not sour, but dry. And still weird, but a dark, wonderful sort of weird. When I smell it, I see an endless desert of jet-black powder-fine sand. Maybe with a volcano nearby, long cold, but you can still smell the fact that there was once fire there.

After an hour, I was sniffing the arms equally. After ninety minutes, it was the sweet arm that was only occasionally getting a sniff. After two hours, I'd forgotten the sweet arm entirely and was dividing my attention between my dinner (a very fine dinner) and the wonderful black dust.

I still delight in this transformation, every time I wear Serge Noire. I don't like the top notes much better than I ever did, but they make me happy, because I know what's coming.

Review Roundup: Love it or hate it, this one gets a lot of opinions! Perfume Posse and Fragrantica and Perfume Shrine and Grain de Musc and Pink Magenta and Nathan Branch and Now Smell This and WAFT and StyleCaster and BitterGrace Notes (one sentence review) and EauMG and Grain de Musc and Basenotes and Fragrantica and Perfume Shrine and Perfume-Smellin' Things and Fragrantica again and Pink Sith.

Edited to expand the Review Roundup.

Photo by Mila Zinkova. Wikimedia Commons. Click for details.