Louise Brooks

One of the most delightful and unexpected aspects of enjoying perfume is when a perfumery house from the past is rebooted for today’s modern audience.  The art of perfumery is wonderfully elastic and not neccessarily anachronistic – houses that had their heyday nearly 100 years ago are re-discovered, polished up and dramatically presented in their former glory.  Such is the case with the Parisian house Isabey.  Isabey’s Lys Noir is a sweet, spiky, narcotic dream of a fragrance, a near psychedelic experience in heady, rich, slightly animalic florals, and it’s ruled my senses ever since I first sampled it. They should sell this fragrance with ankle weights to keep you from floating off into the stratosphere.

Isabey vintage perfume ad

Isabey is a house whose heyday came around 90 years ago in 1924, and has been recently updated by Panouge. Lys Noir is the most recent re launch from this line.  The others include L’Ambre de Carthage (reviewed here on Cafleurebon), Gardenia, Route D'Emeraude ‘and Le Mimosa.

The references to its flapper heritage are all intact (the Lys Noir flacon is a evocative treat from the Roaring 20’s: a jet-black bottle with white flowers cascading down the front, underneath an art-deco inspired font.)  The bottle alone is worth finding this fragrance.

Louise Brooks 1925

The perfume inside is sweet, supple and direct:  the top note is simply black pepper, which frames a lush, dizzying heart of lily, an animalic tubereuse, heliotrope and narcissus.  The drydown is all about creamy ebony and sandalwood, with a light backing of musks and patchouli to ground the scent and your head.

Perfumer Jean-Jaques is the nose for Isabey Paris scents

The overall feel here is a dreamy, druggy, insinuating style that immediately shutters your eyelids.   The best way to experience it might be to have the Beatles “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” playing in the background.  Actually – forget that – you’ll want high-quality headphones and nothing better to do all day than huff your wrist and listen to music in order to completely cave in and submit to the gorgeousness here.   Jean Jacques created Lys Noir, and the fragrance has quiet sillage but enormously lush and powerful strength.  Lys Noir knows better than to announce itself to others when it has you all to itself for as long as it wants

Louise Brooks white flowers 1920s

This perfume will happily play with your mind all day long, hour after blissed-out hour, with your vision blurred, and confined to an endless vista of acres and acres of soft white petals.  There’s a richness and depth to this fragrance that’s borderline decadent – a fat, voluptuous, sticky, staggering decadence. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.  One whiff of this and you’re in another land.

Louise Brooks as a Denishawn dancer. 1920s

There’s nothing demure about it – the white flowers in the heart soon take on the size of skyscrapers, and the black pepper at the start is just the shadow your hands cast trying to blot out their enormous, dripping radiance.  Lys Noir is as deeply wondrous, narcotic and secretly addictive as any hookah parlor or speakeasy from the devil-may-care 1920’s era.  But don’t fret – there’s enough softness and sweet, almond-scented padding to keep you upright.

Disclosure:  the sample of Lys Noir was obtained from Twisted Lily

Steve Johnson, Senior Contributor

Notes; Black pepper, lily, tuberose, heliotrope, narcissus, ebony, sandalwood, patchouli, musk

Thanks to Twisted Lily we have a draw for 3 samples of Lys Noir for three US readers. To be eligible please leave a comment with why you would like to try Isabey Lys. Draw closes 1/25/2014

We announce the winners only on site and on our Facebook page, so Like Cafleurebon and use our RSS option…or your dream prize will be just spilled perfume.