Nuit de Bakélite got me and won my very personal prix de l’emotion, right from the very first sniff.
Naomi Goodsir, an Australian fashion designer, added a perfume line to her creative universe in 2012. The collection now includes five perfumes. Three of them are signed by Julien Rasquinet (Bois d’Acesse and Cuir Velours, 2012, and Iris Cendre, 2015), one by Bertrand Duchaufour (Or du Serail, 2014), and the latest one by Isabelle Doyen (Nuit de Bakélite, 2017).
Goodsir’s palette has been multiply recognized, and the latest perfume – Nuit de Bakélite – has been multiply awarded:
In 2018. Nuit de Bakélite received the perfume Oscar – FIFI Awards France 2018: The Best Niche & Independent Brand Fragrance – Experts Award, Art and Olfaction Award 2018. and Olfactorama Paris 2018 – Prix de l’emotion.
Though it is inadequate to compare different awards in separate fields of art, except maybe for just a tiny bit to mark matching significance, I will still do that. So, for those who are less acclaimed in the perfume community, here it goes: the number of awards for this perfume roughly corresponds to the situation when a new film is awarded an Oscar, Palm d’Or in Cannes, and then also a Venetian Golden Lion or maybe a BAFTA award instead.
In short, with Nuit de Bakélite, Naomi Goodsir and Isabelle Doyen nailed it.
In my first encounter, Nuit de Bakélite knocked me off my feet and did what only a few perfumes succeed: it made me turn on all my cognitive and emotional capacities and then, almost at the same time, only with a clear and loud: “Want!”, made me wish to turn them off as unnecessary translations of completely clear and comprehensive scent message.
This is what art succeeds to do:
“How you represent reality. How you transform it. How you frame a section of it to bring out unheard-of connections between its elements. How old materials can express new effects. How new materials can shed light on classic forms or create novel ones. How to give shape to an idea in a way that hasn’t been done before…These are not the questions asked by the artisan, a technician or an industrial designer. These are the questions of an artist …”
This is the quote from Perfume Lover by Denyse Beaulieu, from chapter 19, dedicated to the concept of perfume as art. In Nuit de Bakélite, the synergy of Isabelle Doyen and Naomi Goodsir answered all those questions in an artful and unique way.

Isabelle Doyen is mostly known as the in-house perfumer for Goutal, a house full of beautiful perfume creations that, at the general level, have in common reinterpretation of the perfume tradition without significant shift or any radical twist.
Doyen’s opus within Goutal’s aesthetics might seem utterly different from Goodsir’s creative universe and modern and bold aestheticism, clear contours and highly stylized interpretations.
But Isabelle Doyen is also known for her work for LeNez, where she expressed her experimental and exploratory side. I see Nuit de Bakélite for Naomi Goodsir on the same track as Doyen’s LeNez opus.
Conceptually, Nuit de Bakélite has more in common with Doyen’s Turtle Vetiver than with any creation made for Goutal: as Turtle Vetiver grew out of the idea of exploring the least favourable facets of the vetiver, Nuit de Bakélite was built around the idea of merging and presenting the “impossible” or least favourable tuberose facets – the plastic/artificial one, represented by bakelite scent, and the vegetable green one, featuring timider and less explored “nature” of the flower, but stylized almost to the maximum.
This Goodsir-Doyen tuberose is the result of a beautiful and creative synergy between two women with substantially matching artistic sensibilities.
Her fresh, green natural self flawlessly performed the start of a hypnotic show in a reverse scope.
Her mature sophistication in managing to embody and present her virginal and seductively intoxicating opposites and avoid any tuberose stereotype.

This collision of green, fresh nature and unnatural exuberance knocked me over. After about 15 minutes of perfume development, I stopped searching for the reasons for receiving awards and immediately dedicated a place for this perfume on my real scented shelf.
Nuit de Bakélite got me.
This does not happen often.

Further into drydown, the fusion of a plastic-leather layer with the green, fresh floral facet somehow ceases to be shocking and radical and becomes the expression of uncompromising self-awareness: not quite natural, not quite artificial, not entirely innocent, not quite weird – unique.
This final result is thickly supported with creamy and milky musk, which modifies and bridges between extremes and significantly contributes to the final change.
Enveloped in musk, flowery green tuberose gains volume and a prolonged push into space, and the off-amazement of artificial plasticity that continues to lurk and tickle from the background smells complexly mature and classically grandiose.
This later twist is smooth and lasting. By the end of its existence on the skin, Nuit de Bakélite acts as a wearable haute couture creation, a charismatic and complex fragrance entity that, despite the shift, functions within the most classical olfactive framework.
Nuit de Bakélite has a statement attitude. In a charismatic way of the classical divas (Fracas included), this tuberose self-consciously presents a unique character:
Mature. Powerful.
Overwhelming.
Uncompromising.
Classically wearable and acceptable, but challenging: “Deal with me!”
Fascinating.
This Goodsir-Doyen interpretation of the least appealing or most challenging aspects of tuberose, a very demanding floral note, has produced a perfume that manages to be avant-garde and thoroughly modern but also traditional in the way the old classics are.
Fully functioning inside and outside the mainstream frame, Nuit de Bakélite is impressive:
While completely different from any possible reference, the tuberose at Nuit de Bakélite possesses something of the intriguing weirdness and off-amazement found in the opening Tuberose Criminelle. It presents the meticulous, almost intellectual study of the green floral aspect of the Carnal Flower and shows the bold charisma and self-confidence of the classically dominant and grandiose tuberoses like Fracas or Poison.
Uniqueness, along with a wide range of possible references, is also immanent in all works of art, including perfumes.
I didn’t expect to meet my second tuberose “for forever” and yet Nuit de Bakélite got me and won my very personal prix de l’emotion, right from the very first sniff.


Disclosure – Purchased.
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