Serge Lutens Nuit de Cellophane: A Review

Nuit de Cellophane does not smell particularly like osmanthus. Instead it is a bright, joyous and billowy white floral, heavy on jasmine, lily, champaca and some fruity citrus. Nuit de Cellophane is a beautiful white floral but it is not worthy of the Lutens name. There is absolutely nothing unusual, unique, jarring or unexpected about Nuit de Cellophane. It is very pretty, very well done and very mainstream.

For those who adore Serge Lutens because they desire the brands’ ability to cause consideration of perfume as an intellectual pursuit or perhaps you are drawn to Lutens because you love to find the beauty within the beast, the good inside the bad, the swooning within the sickening, well, do not look to Nuit de Cellophane for any of this. I must admit that my first thought after wearing Nuit de Cellophane was, “the SL brand must need a mainstream success very badly; they must need some easy sales in a tough economy.” Let’s face it; perfumery is an art within a business landscape after all, so they very much need to sell the bloody juice.

After considering the Lutens line a bit further I can see how they might very well need an easy commercial success. A La Nuit is an extremely heady and heavy jasmine fragrance. It is incredibly indolic and while this is its main appeal for me, it might be considered too much for most people. Sarrasins is my second favorite jasmine fragrance of all time (2nd to Thierry Mugler Alien of all things!). I love Sarrasins because of it’s undercurrent of leather. Jasmine and leather is an unusual pair that works gorgeously. Datura Noir is a sultry rendition of the night blooming Datura flower. It’s sexy, unusually waxy and somewhat tropical, although as pretty as it is, it has an acquired taste, so to speak. I suppose the Serge Lutens brand needed a beautiful white floral, which was simply pretty without any weird notes whatsoever, and downright linear. (yes, a completely linear Lutens!).

In sum, I will grant Lutens this mainstream white floral and wish him huge success in the hope that it will simply be an aberration and Lutens/Sheldrake can then go back to creating atrocious beauties like Tubereuse Criminelle, Iris Silver Mist and Musc Koublai Khan again soon. *draws in breath after run-on sentence*