Serge Lutens – A La Nuit

I live in an area where the climate is predominantly hot and humid year-round. While this robs me of certain pastimes and limits my ability to fully indulge in my winter fragrance wardrobe, access to the outdoors I have in abundance. One of my greatest pleasures is evening walks through my neighborhood, where I am often accompanied by the sweet, heady scent of night-blooming jasmine. The sillage of natural jasmine is unbelievably potent, its indolic fragrance lingering in the air long after I have passed its source.

Jasmine adds a sense of surrealism to the night, stealthily appearing out of the darkness, a presence which becomes nearly palpable. Jasmine also evokes a bit of melancholy, as the tiny buds which were so tightly bound throughout the day unfurl come nightfall to reveal their gift, only to expire in the process. The scent we experience occurs at the end of the cycle for the flower, the nectar it releases serving as a call for renewal and rebirth by pollination. It is fitting then that the dense, sweet scent of jasmine can often suggest a hint of decay or decomposition. It is this tangible, poignant quality of jasmine that Serge Lutens and Christopher Sheldrake capture so skillfully in A La Nuit.

While jasmine as a note is commonly used in perfumery to lend a rich, velvety quality to a fragrance, a jasmine soliflore is quite another thing altogether. If you do not enjoy jasmine as a singular note, then please read no further, for A La Nuit is surely the quintessential jasmine fragrance, with an opening so true to the flower that it almost resembles an essential oil. In “Perfumes: The A-Z Guide”, Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez refer to A La Nuit as “death by jasmine”. For me, the fragrance represents instead “death of jasmine”. Lutens perfectly captures the beautiful, ephemeral nature of this flower, from the moment of its opening bloom through its eventual expiration, rendering it in ample, sweeping strokes.

Lutens and Sheldrake sourced high quality jasmine of Moroccan, Indian and Egyptian origins, combining them with green notes to render a three-dimensional floral presence. The opening is intense, even for a jasmine enthusiast and holds nothing back, much like the actual flower reaching its tendrils of scent through the night air.

A La Nuit remains tenacious and potent for close to two hours until little by little, the fragrance begins softening, like the embers of a dying fire. The overripe, spicy sensation begins dissipating, only to be replaced with a warm, slightly floral base that hints faintly at musk and Lutens’s signature amber, giving the fragrance a subtle woody character.

Like many of Serge Lutens’s fragrances, A La Nuit appears to be a narrative, written in scent which tells of the beauty and eventual dissolution of jasmine. While A La Nuit is the story of a flower, I cannot help but think that Lutens is conveying the reality of the human condition as well, its fragility and transience.

Floral

Notes: Moroccan, Indian and Egyptian jasmine, green shoots, white honey, benzoin, musk and clove