Description

“Nimerè Parfums Shades of Darkness heralds from Nimerè’s Madame de Pompadour Collection which explores sensual intrigue within the court of Louis XV and the brilliant Jeanne Antoinette Poisson aka Madame de Pompadour – Louis’ cherished official mistress and political advisor from 1745-1751. Nikolay describes this fragrance as the distillation of a very persistent amour who will not take no for an answer; it is on this very night when the coy female in question will succumb to his desire.

While I felt the perfumer’s intent and brook no argument whatsoever, I was transported to an earlier time via my habitual nonsense: cadence, melody, coloration. Nimerè Parfums Shades of Darkness is a crepuscular perfume true to its appellation. Duskily luminous, I heard the strains of Thomas Dowland crowned with lute accompaniments from 1606, a countertenor bemoaning the travails of courtly love (the song was covered by Sting EXACTLY 400 years later in the 2006 album Songs from the Labyrinth):

“In darkness let me dwell; the ground shall sorrow be,The roof despair, to bar all cheerful light from me;
The walls of marble black, that moist’ned still shall weep;
My music, hellish jarring sounds, to banish friendly sleep.
Thus, wedded to my woes, and bedded in my tomb,
O let me living die, till death doth come, till death doth come. 

Nimerè Parfums Shades of Darkness waxes ardent and sensual: herbal verdancy dallies with green leaves, nutmeg (an hallucinogen when ingested in excess!); bronzed saffron and eugenol-enamored carnation heat things up. A veritable floral riot ensues upon the lovers’ heels; some waft indolic (jasmin, narcissus), others expose their barely-contained fleshy bodice (ylang, rose, champaca)greedily. A few intimate cool ionone beauty (violet) and steely hauteur (iris). Tobacco tendrils suggest encroaching erotic détente. We follow the lovers into a penumbra of resins, the shadowy undergrowth where privacy is a given as they lie undisturbed amidst the likes of oakmoss, patchouly, vetiver, ambergris, leathery, animalic tones…Perhaps vestiges of an abandoned cathedral hover in the atmosphere, olfactorily conjured by myrrh, temple incense – barely tempered by the faintest vanillic whisper, the bittersweetness of cocoa. This night is theirs alone; permission is not a prerequisite.” – review by Ida Meister.

Shades of Darkness was launched in 2015. The nose behind this fragrance is Nikolay Eremin.