Meeting Naomi Goodsir and Isabelle Doyen

When I enter room n.55, I find myself in a completely white environment. 

The carpet on the ground is of thick creamy color, soft and voluptuous. All the rest is milk white: the furniture was wrapped in sheets. 

The idea is to cancel the chromatic perception to foster a strange uniformity. 

Naomi Goodsir wanted to summon those nights of insomnia when the mind is immersed in a sort of white noise, where you can't grasp your thoughts properly, nor recognize your emotions; you float, immersed in a dusty mist that dulls your brain, already half asleep yet unable to fully let go. A pretty disturbing thing.

In the room, the only stimulus affecting the senses is a powerful vegetal perfume: green, magnetic, primitive, and gentle together. It takes a bit to understand it, but it's tuberose. 

Indeed, it is Naomi Goodsir's new launch: Nuit de Bakélite by Isabelle Doyen.

"Naomi, after four woody, resinous, leathery scents... finally you've made a floral! And what a floral this is!"

"I'm happy with the result but... what a hard time! It took me more than three years to get here!"

After four experiences with Bertrand Duchafour, who signed Iris Cendrè, Cuir Velour, Bois d'Ascese and Or du Serail, how was working with Isabelle Doyen like?"

"Isabelle and I knew each other since long, it was easy to work with her. She's a simple and straightforward person, like me."

"Almost four years to create a scent are many! What was the difficulty?"

"Choosing a precise direction. For a long time, I was unsure about how to treat tuberose: light or dark? Isabelle continued to bring in drafts of incredible beauty. I would have at least three ready scents to launch! It took a while before the direction finally emerged, and finally, I chose dark."

As Naomi sprays my wrists, I finally meet Isabelle Doyen, a composer I admire a lot.

For twenty years she composed for Annick Goutal well-built, fine, sophisticated fragrances with some exceptional pearls of rare beauty like Duel, Mon Parfum Cheri and Sables.

In the last ten years, she started working also for other brands and has released challenging experiments that have made me discover her really.

By removing the Goutal element from the composition (Annick first and Camille then), you can see, in the backlight, an exquisite person, vibrant, amused, with just a few words -and well-defined- to express strong ideas. 

And in fact, her perfumes are just the same way: immersed in gentleness and delicacy, but invariably hiding a primitive, proud, indomitable beat. 

Her fragrances are composed of thin and overlapping brushstrokes, watercolor-like, and more than evocating situations or memories suggest powerful but subtle feelings, halfway between smiles and tears, between roar and melancholy. What a complex, profound individual she must be!

Even Nuit de Bakélite is a fragrance of this kind: although immersed in a soft and gently tinted purple shade, it possesses a primitive, mystical, transcendent force that's not easy to find (and that reminded me of The Unicorn Spell).