Nuit Vagabonde: three perfumes, three acts, a brand conceived like a film

There are meetings where you leave with more than samples. I met Zack, the founder of Nuit Vagabonde, and I was blown away by so much drive, passion and tenacity in building his brand. Everything here is conceived around cinema. Three perfumes exist today, and they read like a film in three parts. Here is the story of this young house.

A man from the North, a setting from the South

Zack grew up in northern France. He left that region for Nice and the surroundings of Grasse, and it is there that the universe of his brand was built. You can feel it as soon as he talks about it: Nuit Vagabonde's DNA is very close to the French Riviera and the south of France, to its nights, its light, its contrasts. That South speaks to me too, and perhaps that's why the project hooked me straight away.

A brand conceived like a film

The word cinema is not a metaphor placed on a bottle. It structures the entire brand. The perfumes belong to a collection called Nocturne Memory, divided into acts, with an interlude between the first and the second. The site Journal brings together the campaign films, and you find that Super 8 grain that gives the images their archival texture.

Zack told me the through-line of the story. That of a man who is not from the milieu and who finds himself, somewhat by chance, in Monaco, opposite a woman from the higher circles. The seduction and the game between them move the story forward. Two actors, ambassadors of the brand, embody this duo on screen. The soundtrack was imagined by a musician from Toulouse. Art direction, music, actors: everything was thought through, and that desire to do everything oneself is what struck me most during the meeting.

Act I, Cuir de Peau: the meeting

Everything begins in the dimness of a jazz club. The house's texts make two worlds cross there: her, at ease in the place, heiress to a destiny already traced, him, more secret, shaped by the paths one opens alone. Cuir de Peau holds the memory of that instant.

On the composition side, the house announces galbanum and violet leaf in the opening, bergamot, then cashmeran and iris butter at the heart. In the base, there is ambroxan, Vetiver from Java, light patchouli, tonka bean from Brazil and a Virginia blond tobacco absolute. Altogether they tell of tobacco smoke and the leather of a club's armchairs.

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Interlude and Act II, Peau de Cuir: the intimacy

Between the two acts, an interlude, “A few hours later.” The music has faded, the night holds its breath. It is no longer quite the meeting, not yet intimacy. Then the curtain rises on Act II, in the same club, now empty.