New Frag: Encre Noire
Encre Noire smells like pen ink, leather, and firewood. Like burying your nose in a vintage leather-bound book from some neglected corner of a historic library. These three notes—ink, leather, wood—are the most dominant and together create a unique and strangely alluring fragrance.
It’s very dry, dark, sophisticated, sensitive, and introverted. The "gothic and sinister" or “smells like a cemetery at night” aspects of Encre Noire can get somewhat overstated in other fragrance reviews, but it is true that Encre Noire is appealing in an "I don't know why but I'm inexplicably drawn to it" way. It lacks any sweet or vanillic or traditionally masculine notes that popular men’s fragrances often have (in fact I think any gender can pull this one off if you’re moody enough). This mysterious quality also makes this fragrance highly polarizing, so don't expect it to be a crowd pleaser. It's definitely not off-putting; reactions from those around will probably range from “meh” to “ooh you smell nice!” but I primarily wear colognes for my own enjoyment and confidence, so this doesn’t matter too much to me. I also feel that a fragrance which garners 50% neutral reactions is better than a fragrance that garners 10% negative. The presentation, like the fragrance itself, is punching above its price point: a classy, black glass inkwell bottle with a solid wood cap. This one looks great on display and is probably less prone to sun damage compared to fully transparent bottles.
Encre Noire definitely isn't trying too hard to please, and that is a positive to me. It’s not trying to piggyback on the oversaturated popularity of more traditional fragrances. It has its own quietly confident identity, and it works best on wearers with a similar sense of independence. If you want an affordable woody fragrance that offers depth, curiosity, and maturity, Encre Noire is for you. I blind bought mine from Jomashop for ~$25, making this one of my favorite affordable fragrances I’ve tried so far. I’m eager to sample (or just blind buy bottles of) the Sport and A L'Extreme variants.
