The Annick Goutal website says that Nuit Etoilée is the olfactory expression of what it is to “walk for hours close to nature at nightfall. Listening to the wild grass crumple and the pine cones crack under your feet. Collecting branches of evergreen, snapping them, smelling their resinous odor on our fingertips. Then to lie back and enjoy the moonlight, as though alone in the world...” Sounds appealing to me.

Geza Schoen is one of my favourite niche perfumers. The Berlin-based nose is hugely talented and has created fragrances for niche lines Ormonde Jayne, Anat Fritz and biehl parfumkunstwerke. But it’s his collaborative choices I find most interesting.

Vaniglia is still my fragrance reference for vanilla scents. What I enjoy about Santa Maria Novella fragrances is that they are straightforward, rarely conceptual or abstract. 

There’s something about Serge Lutens’ fragrances that speaks to me. I’m fascinated with the backstory and the inspiration behind each one, especially concerning his love of Morocco. A Lutens fragrance has the power to transport me with just a breath of a scent. That’s how I became besotted with Chergui years ago, and I still wear it to this day.

Any discussion about Noir Exquis has to begin with a discussion about gourmand fragrances. According to the L`Artisan press release, the brief for Noir Exquis was: ‘an unexpected rendez-vous in a French patisserie.

Duchesse, from Passage des Perles – a good friend and Montreal-based blogger who writes about style, culture and pearls – selected these five fragrances as an experience for what happens when your sense of taste dances with your sense of smell. Five delish delights in the Gorgeous Gourmands Decant Pack.

Cabaret Nocturne is one of the inaugural fragrances launched by Swedish indie line V/SITEUR. It was inspired by a night years ago that Rainer spent at Pensão Amor, the lively nightclub in the red-light district of Lisbon that used to be a brothel.

The fragrance category of church scents never goes out of fashion. And in a category filled with divine fragrances, Messe de Minuit from Etro, is one of the best.

It didn’t take long for Réglisse Noire, black licorice, the first fragrance by Canadian-born, Grasse-trained perfumer Jessica Buchanan to hit my radar.