A fantasy flower—The first fragrance developed under the creative direction of Riccardo Tisci, Dahlia Noir embodies the mysterious, singular radiance of a woman’s graceful power. Dahlia Noir is both feminine and sensual thanks to its floral and powdery facets, but also powerful and captivating with its woody base notes. A Couture fragrance all in pure lines, a return to supreme luxury. The quintessence of the Givenchy Style.¹

At times, it is almost too perfect (or just boring?) how neatly fragrance brands — and my tastes — stay inside their boxes. As I’ve said here umpteen and a half times, I don’t follow fashion, but I do think nearly anybody who pays any attention at all to perfume could smell yesterday’s subject, Prada Candy, and today’s, the new Dahlia Noir from Givenchy, and say which was the Prada and which was the Givenchy, even if they’d read nothing whatsoever about either fragrance. And I’m just as predictable to anyone who reads here regularly: I didn’t expect to like the Prada, but I did, and I didn’t expect to like the Givenchy,² and I didn’t.

Likewise, I loved the silly Prada Candy commercial, but the commercial for Dahlia Noir left me mostly cold — the shots of Mariacarla Boscono’s dress billowing in the wind are mesmerizing, but most of the rest of it looks like it’s trying way too hard to be sexy. The parts that weren’t trying to be sexy (those long moments when she’s just walking across the floor) struck me as plain dull.

I might say the same for Dahlia Noir’s juice…

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