A Night In the French Quarter

[zankoku_zen]

It was a beautiful night in November, and this moment is one of those snapshots in time that I’ll always hold in my heart: indigo skies of bruised violet, osmanthus, French lavender, and black plum, petrichor-wet and lacquered with frankincense and red benzoin.

[Lycanthrope]

Aw man.

 

There's always one blend that catches me by description, and likely the one with violet... this is definitely sweet, deep blue-violet, and sultry.  I would call this a bit like The Stranger but a smidge fruitier (the plum is quite juicy in this), but also like a mix of night flowers and incense.  The wetness / petrichor is not a blazingly wet rain note, but perhaps there's a very subtle kiss of a dirt or dust note, definitely not super forward, but this grounds it a bit into evocative rather than lush night garden.  

 

Again top wet, this is vacillating between plum and sweet violet petals, which I am totally ok with, in the end the plum seems to dominate, and the osmanthus lends a bit of a fleshy sweet citrus-like floral note, I think the lavender is present but very subtle, adding that kind of subtle, roof of the nose tickling aura that it can do, without dominating or making the blend herbal (at all).  Again the petrichor is just a glaze of wet slick, not oily or excessively marine.  There's some incense swirling in the background, maybe from churches or rituals, but it's far in the distance.  What is in the forefront is a sweet, smooth, violet-plum aura with a touch of relaxing lavender buzz.  I like this a lot.  It reminds me a smidge of Stealthily, Stealthily but deffo fruitier and a bit smokier.  

[ellocentipede]

Oh this is gorgeous. It’s like the nighttime counterpart to A Little Piece of Eternity, which I also love. I get rain-soaked osmanthus and dark plum. The rain note is warm, and not sharp, the osmanthus is perfectly heady without going funky, and the plum provides a nice deep pop of darkness. This does evoke nighttime in the Quarter to me, and is one of my very favorite scents from this update.

[ajansuz]

God, this is beautiful. It is extremely evocative of exactly what it says. You can find yourself in little alcoves or courtyards in the French Quarter that bring tantalizing whiffs of this in the humid night air. (You can also catch more than whiffs of stale beer, motor oil, and less savory scents. Thankfully none of them made it into this blend.) I amp violet. It comes straight to the fore once this is wet on my skin. The lavender is a bit more herbal than strictly floral, and the fruit swells nicely between its grounding and the higher violet. I can't pick out osmanthus particularly. This is a bit more aquatic on me than incense. It's lush and gorgeous with a medium throw that banks down within a couple of hours.

[zankoku_zen]

Dark violet, moody flowers, whiff of air. This smells like it could be a kissing cousin to Midnight on the Midway, sans the food. Just more atmospheric plum skies and flowers in the wind. Good throw and wear length.

[feyofthefellwood]

Rainy florals. Like if you were standing in a flower garden in the rain, and all the petals are soaked. This definitely doesn't have the dryer sheet/white floral/citrus tendency that some rain scents have to me; it's very gentle and subdued. There's a hint of petrichor but it's not an earthy smell. The plum isn't too fruity, the frankincense and benzoin blend into the other notes. This is more comforting than I expected and very atmospheric.

[ziggystardust13]

This is all plum and violet with a hint of petrichor. I love plum but I was wary of the violet in this and so far it’s trying to steal the show, but it could be because I always amp violet to the high heavens. This scent is definitely evocative of dusk when all the light has nearly gone and the sky takes on a purple/blackish hue. 
 

I will test this again after it’s had some more time to rest to see if the violet shrinks a bit, but make no mistake I love everything else about this scent. 

Edited November 15, 2020 by ziggystardust13

[Alisha_SBC]

This is beautiful.
My first thought was a more "traditional perfume" in that it felt classy and like something I'd sniff and forget at the beauty counter.  But a few seconds later, a second sniff, and I am quite enraptured. There's soft plum and gentle florals that don't make me want to sneeze. It's a watercolor washed night, streets damp from a recent rainfall.

This is so very pretty.
 

[groovyrooby]

I adore this smell. I only wish I could find a way to make it last longer on me. Tested from a decant several times, on skin and in a scent locket.

 

When violet works for me, it has a wonderful bubbles solution smell that I love - carefree and slightly mischievous. This brings that to the table plus damp cobblestone smell of petrichor. It smells like a rain-washed late night in New Orleans, not the boozy party zone, but a quiet, contemplative stroll through beautiful fern-draped balconies at the end of the night. It's purple darkness and lush, damp green vegetation. Maybe it's addition of plum that gives it a faint grape candy vibe? Really enjoy this, and it has good throw for a minute, but unfortunately it disappears too quickly. But I'm willing to try a heavier hand and more locket variations to make it work.

Edited December 7, 2020 by groovyrooby

[firefae]

I blind-bottled this based on reviews even though florals are super iffy on me and I'm not sure I have a reference in my brain for what benzoin smells like. But I tend to love purply-plummy scents, and have generally had good luck with ones that include some violet, so...here we are.

 

I'm not sure what I was expecting, exactly, but in the bottle sniff this is a little more pale floral and more watery somehow than whatever those expectations might have been.

 

On my skin, this takes about 10 minutes to settle into something really gorgeous. It's a more "perfumey" scent than I usually reach for, but this is just such a lovely overall experience I don't particularly care about that right now. This is...a dusky watercolor painting captured in perfume form. Or maybe not even a watercolor, necessarily, but impressionistic in the ways wet-surface reflections are streaked impressions of the things they're reflecting? The florals are the most prominent element to me, both violet and osmanthus about equally present, but their prominence might be as much about florals in general tending to read pretty loudly on/to me (a reason I don't reach for them much) as about them really being the main act. There's also a blurred-edges quality grounding it, contributing to that watercolor effect, that I would guess is in the universe of a white or maybe blue musk (although I don't see musk in the scent notes so could be way off base there...maybe this is what benzoin smells like?), a slightly tart fruity bit tangled up way in the background, and that lovely asphalt-after-a-rainstorm layer. I don't get really any lavender, and the plum is way down in there but kind of drowned out by the louder floral notes.

 

A few hours in, it's still going strong, and the flowers are amping a little further...actually dangerously close to headache territory, which is unfortunate. Will definitely be trying this again, though, as it's so complex and evocative and just flat-out pretty, and I can easily imagine it not flirting with headache-ville on some other day. I love how different it is from really anything else I have in bottle form, and think I'll reach for it most in March-April, those weeks of early spring blooms and rainstorms.

[fairybites]

Heavy on the plum and lavender when wet, it turns a tiny bit powdery on me during the dry down stage. There's a strong alcohol note as well, but it goes away after it completely dries. It's dark and very much resembles mainstream perfume to me, but also has a sweetness to it from the florals. 

 

Glad to have received this as a frimp from another seller, I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. The wear time isn't as good as I'd like, so I won't be upgrading to a bottle. But this is definitely very pretty and is worth a try for floral lovers!

[Lucchesa]

I received a testable empty of this with a decant order, and I wouldn't ordinarily have tried it because of the violet.  Violet never works on me.  Except when it does.  This is ridiculously beautiful.  Plum and petrichor and wistful violet.  I'm not making out the lavender, but there's something almost citrusy behind it, keeping the violet from going powdery and old lady on me -- the osmanthus?  No appreciable frankincense either, but the whole ensemble is steeped in longing.  A brilliant example of Beth's gift.

[Argentwolf]

There is a rainy scent to this at first sniff, a little like wet pavement. But on my skin, it's just a really pretty scent that combines violet and incense and a bit of that rain essence all together. It is really, really lovely. I tested this out of a sniffie bottle, and even with the tiny amount I had to put on, it lasted all day. This here is a keeper. I will have to make sure to order a bottle before they go away!

[starbrow]

I keep wavering on this one. There is pseudo-jasmine here, and it's tripping me out. I have smelled lush, apricot-y osmanthus before, and violet, and this is so much more like jasmine than either of those two. And yet...beautiful.

 

I want so much more plum. There is really no more than a very, very faint drop of plum. A Night is vaguely purple, but very strongly floral, and so so HUMID. That is the biggest thing. I can smell mold growing in the air with this scent. It is so unique to the south. And yet, this is a perfumey interpretation of such a mood, and not actual nights walking and smelling petrichor, that wet-green floral euphoria that happens once in a blue moon.

 

Smelling A Night in the French Quarter before reading the description, I really was enjoying the purple-ness of it. Now that I know it's supposed to smell like petrichor, I am kind of disappointed. I kind of love it, I kind of want it to smell so much more authentic. What do, what do. This has been my dilemma for six months!

 

I will have to test my bottle again, eventually...

 

ETA: A year later, the florals have grown really big and heady and powdery for me. I will be letting this one go to a better home!

Edited June 3, 2022 by starbrow

[Bassmastadroog]

When I first tried this on I didn’t like it. It almost smelled like the taste of a popsicle stick. Weird almost internal nasal wood smell. Hard to explain.

 

Thought about selling it, but then I tried it on again and it’s this purple petrichor plum. Maybe a little lavender to cool it off. Feels like an open window on a rainy day, flowers hanging. It’s really pretty. I definitely get some sweet benzoin. 
 

Classy, beautiful New Orleans rain city perfume.

[BoneBone24]

Wet: Purple flowers; clean and heady. The sweetness and darkness of violet, but without its typical sharpness. There's a languid, aquatic aspect too – in a cool and shadowy way (not salty or ozone-y).

Drydown: Deeper as it dries. Resins settle into the mix and the plum comes out lending a dark, sticky sweetness to the blend. The Floral notes are wispy and seem to be trying to break through the stickier, shadowy notes.

Dry: Almost too-blended now. The notes have sort of flattened into a soft, dusky, purple-gray musk. It's lovely, but lacking oomph.

 

7.5 out of 10 bones

[LavenderCoffee]

Found a decant of this the other day and decided to wear it today. The osmanthus comes on strong at first, but then everything comes together and there's no single dominant note. The petrichor is so expertly applied here, and I love plum and benzoin together. Perfectly enchanting and achingly lovely.