Sparkling Cyanide: Datura Noir by Serge Lutens

By Marina

In my imagination, the delicate, passive Farnesiana has an alter ego...because there is only so much a sweet-natured girl can take... push her to the limit and we'll be looking at your necrologue in The NY Times. If you make her really, really angry, Farnesiana turns into Datura Noir, which is anything but delicate or passive. What unites the two for me is the bitter almond quality presented on a creamy floral background. And it is that quality that also makes them oh so different.

In Farnesiana, the almond-heliotrope accord is a soft, if melancholy embrace. In Datura Noir, it is a soupçon of cyanide in your champagne. Lutens and Cheldrake cleverly used various gourmand notes to enhance the sweet allure of brugmansia/angel's trumpet/datura...A little bit of juicy mandarin and peachy osmanthus in the top, vanilla, coconut and apricot in the base, and almond throughout the composition turn Datura Noir into an irresistible temptation....better to pull you in, my dear.

The tuberose, the presence of which lends the composition a languid, tropical feel, is wonderfully creamy, and makes a perfect seductive accomplice to the evil almond. “Very few of us are what we seem,” warns Agatha Christie. That certainly describes Datura Noir. Delicious but poisonous, beautiful but lethal, creamy-white but with the heart of darkness, it will kill you, but softly...if that's any consolation.

Available somewhat more readily than cyanide, wherever Serge Lutens fragrances are sold.