By Kilian
Black Phantom
Black Phantom is Kilian Hennessy’s rum-and-coffee fragrance, released in 2017 and composed by Sidonie Lancesseur. A Martinique rum accord opens onto a strong coffee that Java vetiver turns bitter, before a base where sugar cane joins a creamy sandalwood. The house files it with its Bois de Caves and launched it under a black lacquered skull.
Where to buy
Kilian Hennessy founded his house in 2007 with the L’Œuvre Noire collection. Black Phantom appeared ten years later, in the spring of 2017, and joined the Bois de Caves — the collection where the house gathers its woody fragrances worked with rum, coffee, cocoa and cognac, in memory of the family heritage of the founder.
A buccaneer’s Irish coffee
The launch story rests on a drink: the Shin Shin, a strong coffee cut with Caribbean rum and attributed to pirates. Kilian Hennessy describes an Irish coffee whose traditional whiskey has been replaced by the liquor of the buccaneers, and pushes the fable as far as poison.
Sidonie Lancesseur
Sidonie Lancesseur wrote the formula; the house names her on each of its country pages. The founder presents the fragrance as a collaboration with her, a wording he does not reserve for all of his creations.
Memento Mori
The Latin subtitle gives the fragrance its subject: remember that you will die, and so enjoy the moment. The launch put it more bluntly, with a party tagline borrowed from the register of nights that end badly.
What the house says today
Black Phantom is one of the four fragrances Kilian Paris presents as its icons, alongside Love, don’t be shy, Good girl gone Bad and the Angels’ Share collection. The house offers it from the 30 ml bottle to the 250 carafe, plus a 7.5 ml travel size, all refillable.
Olfactory pyramid
- Top notesThe first minutes
- Heart notesThe heart of the perfume
- Base notesWhat lingers
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The advertising
A skull, no ambassador
No film and no face: a lacquered skull as the lid of the box, a party tagline, and the founder posing with a death’s head at eye level.
Black Phantom had no campaign in the ordinary sense. The house let the object carry the launch: the black lacquered box topped with a skull, shown on its own, and a tagline borrowed from the party register — a little party never killed nobody.
Kilian Hennessy posed himself, not in front of blotters as creators usually do, but holding a black skull at face height, in the manner of a crystal ball. Thomas Dunckley reported on it on the day of release and read it as deliberate humor.
No credit is published: no photographer, no art director, no agency. No advertising film is documented.