Shade of Blue: the lavender of my childhood, elevated at dusk
There are launches you wait for, and then there are those that hit you right in the heart. Shade of Blue, the new fragrance from Une Nuit Nomade that I discovered this morning in exclusive preview at Jovoy, is one of the latter. And for good reason: I'm from Manosque, a few kilometers from the Valensole plateau, that very plateau that inspired the fragrance. The lavender I'm going to talk about is not a distant image for me; it's the landscape of my life. So seeing a niche house take it on with such accuracy touches me particularly, and reconciles me with a material that is too often mistreated. Here's why this fragrance is, for me, one of the most beautiful of the season.
Lavender, the unloved one we are rediscovering
Let's be frank: lavender has long suffered from a difficult image. Assigned to the memory of grandmother's cupboard, soap, scented sachets, or trapped in the classic fougère structures of masculine perfumery, it struggles to exist as a noble and contemporary material. That's unfair, because it's one of the most beautiful signatures of Provence, of my corner of France.
With Shade of Blue, Une Nuit Nomade takes the opposite tack. The house, faithful to its travel and emotion-led perfumery, does not tell the lavender of clichés, but that of a very precise moment: the Valensole plateau at dusk, when the light fades and the mauve spikes turn to a cold, almost electric blue. I've lived that moment dozens of times. When you live nearby, you know that Valensole lavender doesn't smell the same at noon, flattened by the sun, and in the evening, when the air cools and the scent becomes rounder, deeper. It's exactly that tipping point, that suspended moment between day and night, that the fragrance seeks to capture. The name says it: a shade of blue, that of the flower at the hour the sun disappears.
A composition by Marine Ipert
The fragrance is the work of Marine Ipert, perfumer at Takasago. She built a lavender in several voices, playing on different facets of the flower: a lavender absolute for depth and honeyed nuances, lavender for its fidelity to the field, and lavandin for aromatic, piercing freshness. Three readings of the same plant, superimposed like gradients of blue.
Around this heart, the construction is one of elegant contrasts. In the opening, bergamot brings luminous brightness, while myrrh immediately installs a resinous, mineral freshness that tensions the whole and prevents it from sinking into easy sweetness. And in the base, that's where all the daring takes place: a tonka bean absolute and a caramel accord warm the flower, make it gourmand, almost caramelized, exactly as lavender soaked in sun can become at the end of the day. The gamble is risky, because sugar could smother the flower. It doesn't: the gourmand element supports the lavender without ever crushing it, and that's what makes the fragrance successful.
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