Noir Obscur
Antonio Alessandria (2014)

It ultimately skews a bit anonymous in its dark, sweet, vaguely tobacco-y spiciness, but when Noir Obscur opens I find myself quite enjoying its alluring floral heart. An almost satisfying fragrance.

In my opinion, most ambers are the blunt instruments of the perfume world, providing something that references function (‘perfumes make you smell nice' or ‘perfumes lift my spirits') without the distinguishing features to make them essential. It's good to get that bias off my chest, which is where Noir Obscur is currently nestling.
Noir Obscure is a leathery amber with a bit of booze up top, and some iris in the heart to keep the leather company and to smudge with make-up the patchouli that brings up the rear. It doesn't have the density that I dread in ambers and there's a certain citrus-spice zing to it's opening. The throw of the thing has polish, no suggestion of anything rough and, surprisingly, I am quite happy to have it humming in the background as I go about my work.

Noir Obscur had, at least theoretically, all the characteristic to be a big winner with me but as a matter of fact, I found it somewhat of a letdown.

The fragrance is actually pretty decent but it feels sort of anonymous and definitely too quiet. An oriental woody with leathery facets and a tad of sweetness. There's one moment during the opening that things seem to take an interesting path when a leathery-iris combo comes into play. It vaguely recalls of the leather accord which is present in several compositions by Duchaufour but, unfortunately, it doesn't last long. In fact, Noir Obscur turns pretty soon into a cedarwood-vetiver drydrown with barely perceptible ambery facets.

Not completely bad but I think the fragrance suffers from an overall weakness that turns it into an almost invisible skin scent in less than two hours. At these prices and considering the plethora of other similarly-themed options available on the market, this doesn't make it to standout. Sorry.

Noir Obscur is in my opinion a "nothing-more-that-cute" ambery-leather scent, good if you're new to niche or with particularly low expectations and pretenses. Contemporary, plainly trendy, fairly similar to a lot of other leathers, softened by vanilla, ambery notes, olibanum, spices (cumin), a subtle floral breeze which delivers a sense of radiance and refined whiteness all over, but also on the other side a slight hint of ambiguous, earthy carnality, slightly boozy too - an effect enhanced by the rhum note you clearly smell at the opening. Woods and patchouli. Quite delicate overall, it has a nice inner dynamism, but it's all quite restrained and toned down, too much to appreciate it in my opinion. It would be a good scent honestly, if someone just turned up the volume and the persistence knob. After less than one hour, in fact, all you remain with it's basically a generic, still pleasant but fairly dull synthetic leather-amber-floral scent which can be anything. I admit this one lasts for some decent four or five hours, which is the best I got from this line in terms of persistence, but the deepness and the texture you get for these hours are incredibly thin and delicate, fairly lacking in substance and character. Basically, the drydown other scents have after, say, 8 hours and a shower, you get it here after barely 2 hours. You know what this all feels similar to? Being at a rock concert with earplugs on. You kind of hear something, but...

5,5-6/10