A hot summer’s night in 1838 at…Nohant, the setting of…famous and decadent late-night parties where all of Paris’s intellectuals and artists throng: Alfred de Musset, Franz Liszt, Marie d’Agoult, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Delacroix. Inveterate night owls, George Sand and her lover…Frédéric Chopin, stroll languorously through the gardens till dawn. The air is saturated by the opulent trail of the novelist’s sumptuous perfume. — Astier de Villatte
That’s the description of Les Nuits, one of three perfumes in Astier de Villatte’s new Trois Parfums Historiques collection; the other two are Le Dieu Bleu (representing Ancient Egypt) and Artaban (giving us a sniff of Ancient Rome). After a lifetime of MAJOR perfume mistakes (blind buys) and disappointments (blind buys), I was STILL ready to buy Les Nuits without smelling it first — could this fragrance bring me closer to one of my idols, George Sand? I’m a perfect example that “live and learn” is a hope, not a certainty…
