Lalique White in Black
Lalique (2021)

To my proletarian nose and budget, White in Black is a great way to eke out my PdM Layton reserve. There are days when I don’t need the full PdM treatment (leg days at the gym, for instance) so WiB is just grand for a Layton-like miasma. For that Glyndebourne night, however, it has to be Layton itself.

The opening of White in Black is nice and does have some similarities with PdM Layton but it is lacking in both the richness/fullness of the scent and the performance.

The difference with this and Layton is that the Lalique is much more powdery soft and dryer sheet clean. A lot of what makes Layton so seductive and powerful isn't found in White in Black. For something more similar, Costume National I is where to look, both in scent and performance.

Not a bad scent at all, just not Layton. Also, performance is lacking as you'll need extra sprays to keep the fun of the opening going. Disappears after 3-4 hours.

Lalique White in Black (2021) really has nothing whatsoever in common with Lalique White (2008), other than it borrows the form factor from Lalique pour Homme (1997), just like Lalique White does. The name and graphics are kind of stupid too, and this could have very well just been named "Lalique Black". Many of the usual FragBro suspects who groupthink based on confirmation bias and peer pressure, rather than smell for themselves, have called this a clone of Parfums de Marly Layton (2016); and I guess there is some merit in that comparison, although I do not believe they are more alike than they are different. Overall, this is a step in a very safe direction for Lalique, which is a bit sad because they were not really known for "safe" fragrances beforehand. I guess sooner or later with the way the market is going, everything not selling for hundreds of dollars per ounce has to be homogenized with big picture composition-by-marketing-data just to sustain sales; since the overall number of average people buying fragrance is going down due to median incomes shrinking, plus changes in Western culture making obvious fragrance wearing offensive in most public or professional spaces, so middle market brands are increasingly casting wider nets by design. The problem with this, as evidenced by Lalique's turn with White in Black, is that if everyone's doing it times ten, you end up with 2000+ similar-smelling releases per year rather than 500 or so really distinct fragrances launched every few years. That glut of choice and redundancy ultimately fuels the discounters that further cut into any profits these brands hope to make when their cookie-cutter fragrances end up flushed from retailers for the next round of newcomers.

All that out of the way, Lalique White in Black is nice for what it tries to be, just like Ralph's Club by Ralph Lauren (2021) is nice for what it tries to be, or Montblanc Explorer Ultra Blue (2021) is nice for what it too, tries to be. Nice and fine by design; nothing exciting, nothing dangerous, nothing risky, or nothing to potentially spur challenge or rejection; White in Black is perhaps a more tongue-in-cheek way for Lalique to join this Borg collective of commericial muzac for the nose, saying "we're the same but still a little different than everyone else". The opening is spicy, with pink pepper popping alongside sweet citruses that set you up for the also-sweet lavandin, cardamom, and elemi heart. This smells a little like Layton in fits and starts but there is no apple or overt sugary feeling here, with spices and smoke instead making White in Black actually better and more "masculine". That is to say, White in Black smells about as masculine as any modern "tonkabacco" can, with a richness and smoke mixed with sweetness and a blob of synthetic spice. The base is this hinted tonka note, infused with woody-ambers, ambroxan, vanilla and tolu; I'm guessing the woody-ambers are covering the olibanum and cedar oil Lalique is saving money by not using. Lalique White in Black smells like a fragrance that wants to be a club banger if that club is wood floor gastropub with a wine bar and an open mic for amateur covers of "Wonderwall". Performance is good and decently long, plus this feels like a respectable evening or night out fragrance to contrast Lalique White's mostly office-friendly approach; Lalique "day" and Lalique "night" are these two used in tandem. I think White in Black has good cold weather potential too, and does what Carolina Herrera Bad Boy Le Parfum (2021) does without having the rough edges of the woody-ambers hanging their butts out like drunk college kids mooning you after a wild frat party.

Try as I might not be a cynical windbag nobody wants to read reviews from anymore, I can't help but feel like this may be the beginning of the "L'Oréalfication" of Lalique, meaning future baseline scents will become super samey and overtly commercial, while everything worth sniffing will require a loan taken out against your home equity to buy. I guess with income inequality being what it is, and drugstore brands vanished from shelves that once used to serve what are effectively the working poor (ones who scrimp to wear perfume at all like I used to), any brand selling perfumes at anything close to accessible price points (if $130+ USD for Lalique is to be considered accessible) must take this "low-cost high-yield" stratagem to satisfy increasingly bearish shareholders or private investors. L'Insoumis Ma Force (2018) was the signal fire nobody wanted to believe was hearalding this change, from boldly creative but wearable to obviously commercial; but having a sprinkle of that former creativity left in both it and Lalique White in Black may be enough to keep the real cynics from writing off Lalique as another in a long-line of "sold my soul to the company store" brands. The pitchforks and torches will come next if they ever start discontinuing the classics that made them such a bargain brand for the budding tastemaker, and I won't mention those because that'll jinx us all. Rounded, aromatic, sweet, and impeccably well-blended by Karine Dubreuil, Lalique White in Black at least does us the favor of being one of the more thoughtful commercial releases of 2021 that actually shows some attention to detail, something Lalique has been known for since they relied on glassmaking to pay the bills. I guess stuff like this is meant to pay the bills now. Sigh. Thumbs up