Nuit de Bakélite is tuberose stripped of its glamour and put somewhere darker. Perfumer Isabelle Doyen's brief to herself was precise: the small peduncle connecting flower to stem, the sound of latex when tuberose stalks tangle, the wild quality of the Persian variety. Not the tuberose of romance -- the tuberose of something more unsettling.

Galbanum opens it -- green, sharp, almost medicinal. Tuberose and a bakelite accord form the heart, that distinctive warm plastic note giving the flower an edge it doesn't usually have. Cistus labdanum grounds the base. The result is green, obsessive and genuinely hard to forget.

Nuit de Bakélite won Best Niche and Independent Brand Fragrance at the FIFI Awards France 2018, the Art and Olfaction Award 2018, and the Prix de l'Émotion at Olfactorama Paris 2018. It was named one of the 111 perfumes to smell before dying by Nez la Revue, and one of the top 10 niche perfumes of the decade 2010 to 2020 by Au Parfum. The awards matter here because they reflect something real about what this fragrance does to people who encounter it.

Head Notes: Galbanum Heart Notes: Tuberose, Bakelite Accord Base Notes: Cistus Labdanum

Perfumer: Isabelle Doyen (2017). Genderless. Eau de Parfum. 50ml.

Naomi Goodsir is a Sydney-born, Paris-based designer who moved into fragrance with the same eye she brought to millinery -- obsessive, precise, and unconcerned with convention. Each scent in the range is built around an image or a memory strong enough to anchor a composition. We stock Naomi Goodsir because she is one of the few perfumers working at this level with a direct line back to Australia, and because the range is genuinely hard to find outside of specialist fragrance retail.